We welcome applications from the United States of America
We've put together information and resources to guide your application journey as a student from the United States of America.
Overview
Top reasons to study with us
6
6th for Creative Writing
The Complete University Guide (2025)
7
7th for English
The Guardian University Guide (2025)
7
7th for Creative Writing
The Guardian University Guide (2025)
Why Lancaster?
Design your degree, selecting from a wide range of modules, exploring history and literature from the ancient to the modern, and the local to the global
Study in a city steeped in history, and with the Lake District, home of the Romantic poets, on your doorstep
Hear from visiting authors and academics at our many literary events, on campus, online, and in Lancaster’s historic Castle Quarter
Enhance your knowledge in regular small-group seminars with inspiring, world-class scholars
Graduate with skills in analysis, communication, and persuasion that will make you stand out in the jobs market
Explore a vast range of literary works, from ancient myth to the contemporary graphic novel, and study a host of historical movements, from the fall of Rome to the rise of human rights. Through engagement with texts and artefacts crossing continents and centuries, our interdisciplinary programme will immerse you in both literature and history.
Map your own journey
You will be able to select from a wide range of modules (from ‘Medieval Theatre’ to ‘Urban Gothic’ and ‘The Normans in Italy’ to ‘The Cold War’) and, in your third-year dissertation, be free to explore a literary and/or historical topic or theme of your own choosing. In literature, this could be, say, Renaissance sermons or filmic representations of World War One; in history, this could be, say, a global phenomenon like the Transatlantic Slave Trade or a local story like the Lancashire ‘Witch’ Trials.
Support at every step of the way
We keep our seminars small so that we can really get to know our students. If you choose to write a dissertation, you’ll receive one-to-one guidance from your tutor to deep dive into a topic you’re passionate about.
To supplement your studies, you’ll have a range of opportunities to develop real-world skills that will prepare you for your future career. You might choose to get involved with one of our four student-run literary journals (Cake, Flash, Lux and Errant), giving you invaluable experience in writing or publishing. You may also wish to take part in our schools placement module or our heritage placement module, where past students have worked with organisations like The National Trust and the Duchy of Lancaster.
Discover a wide expanse of genres and time periods, right up to newly published literature. Our students explain what it’s like to study English Literature at Lancaster University, from our close-knit community and small-group teaching, to the accessibility of our friendly teaching staff.
Being so close to the spectacular Lake District, home of the Romantic poets, we have world-class strengths in Romanticism. Our partnership with the Wordsworth Trust, at Grasmere, is long-established, and has a number of new benefits for all our students.
The Castle Quarter is both a wonderful place to enjoy, with many excellent places to eat and drink, and a wonderful resource for literary studies here at Lancaster. Our students have many opportunities to make the most of this resource.
History at Lancaster University
With modules covering a diverse range of historical periods and geographies, heritage placement opportunities, and a wealth of history on your doorstep, discover where studying History at Lancaster University could take you.
Careers
Throughout your degree here you will be learning vital professional skills, such as written and oral communication, thinking both critically and creatively, and presenting well-researched arguments.
A degree from Lancaster will help you to develop a versatile, transferable skillset that will open up a plethora of exciting career opportunities.
Some of the sectors you might choose to pursue a career in include:
Journalism
Publishing
Heritage organisations and museums
Charities
Marketing
Teaching
Many Lancaster graduates also choose to go on to further study, undertaking a Master’s degree or PhD.
Lancaster University is dedicated to ensuring that you gain a highly reputable degree. We are also dedicated to ensuring that you graduate with relevant life and work-based skills. We are unique in that every student is eligible to participate in The Lancaster Award, which offers you the opportunity to complete activities such as work experience, employability/career development, campus community and social development.
Our graduates go on to a diverse range of careers from academics to celebrated poets, screen-writers and novelists. Others go into a host of other careers closely related to literary study, such as teaching, publishing, copywriting and advertising. A degree in literary studies can, though, lead to other, less obvious futures, such as psychotherapy, emerging markets consultancy, data analysis and finance.
Find out about some of the careers our alumni have entered into after graduation.
Entry requirements
These are the typical grades that you will need to study this course. This section will tell you whether you need qualifications in specific subjects, what our English language requirements are, and if there are any extra requirements such as attending an interview or submitting a portfolio.
Qualifications and typical requirements accordion
AAB
36 Level 3 credits at Distinction plus 9 Level 3 credits at Merit
We accept the Advanced Skills Baccalaureate Wales in place of one A level, or equivalent qualification, as long as any subject requirements are met.
DDD
A level at grade B plus BTEC(s) at DD, or A levels at grade AB plus BTEC at D
35 points overall with 16 points from the best 3 HL subjects
We are happy to admit applicants on the basis of five Highers, but where we require a specific subject at A level, we will typically require an Advanced Higher in that subject. If you do not meet the grade requirement through Highers alone, we will consider a combination of Highers and Advanced Highers in separate subjects. Please contact the Admissions team for more information.
Distinction overall
Help from our Admissions team
If you are thinking of applying to Lancaster and you would like to ask us a question, complete our enquiry form and one of the team will get back to you.
Delivered in partnership with INTO Lancaster University, our one-year tailored foundation pathways are designed to improve your subject knowledge and English language skills to the level required by a range of Lancaster University degrees. Visit the INTO Lancaster University website for more details and a list of eligible degrees you can progress onto.
Contextual admissions
Contextual admissions could help you gain a place at university if you have faced additional challenges during your education which might have impacted your results. Visit our contextual admissions page to find out about how this works and whether you could be eligible.
Course structure
Lancaster University offers a range of programmes, some of which follow a structured study programme, and some which offer the chance for you to devise a more flexible programme to complement your main specialism.
Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, and the University will make every reasonable effort to offer modules as advertised. In some cases changes may be necessary and may result in some combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.
This module is taught across the whole of the academic year and is designed to extend and deepen your understanding of the past, simultaneously equipping you with the cognitive, analytical, and digital skills needed to study history. The module will provide both a survey of the last two thousand years of history, and an introduction to the issues and challenges involved in attempting to know and understand the past.
The module is organised to provide a rounded and multi-dimensional introduction to the discipline of history. We will help you to understand humanity through its past, but also to understand which elements of human life resonate with you: people’s conflict or their co-operation; their sense of self or their altruism; their hierarchies or their destructiveness; their peculiarity or how recognisable the past can be.
This module includes three components:
The first introduces you to broad patterns of continuity and change within the standard chronological division of history: Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern and Modern.
The second, ‘Disputed Histories’, introduces new perspectives and methodologies to the study of themes encountered earlier in the course.
The final component explores the skills that you will derive from this module as well as the numerous careers that you can pursue with a history degree.
Each week’s lecture is usually taught by a different faculty member, and so you will be introduced to the historians in the department and the subjects they research.
What our students say:
‘The teaching was very good and the lecturers were consistently engaging.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘The seminars were very helpful on gaining new perspectives on different topics and the group discussions were engaging.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
In this year-long module you will encounter a broad range of literature -- from the Middle Ages to the 21st century, moving from Chaucer, through Shakespeare and Milton, to Virginia Woolf, Alison Bechdel, Paul Muldoon, and many others.
You will also encounter a whole range of literary genres including plays, films, short stories, novels, poetry, essays, and the graphic novel. The module is currently focused around themes related to: Englishness and Empire; Authority and Revolution; Gender, Body, and Voice; and Adaptation and Queering.
The module concludes with a range of mini-modules relating literary research to real-world scenarios; recent options have included:
Mediaeval Manuscripts in the Digital Age
Creating a Literary Podcast
Building Minecraft Worlds for the Teaching of Literature
Creating a Literary Tour
Reading Lancaster Priory
Re-writing Waiting for Godot.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Optional
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Everybody knows that France and Russia had revolutions. But what about Britain? This module will challenge the popular view that Britain is a land of stability and continuity, focusing instead on the dramatic series of changes from 1500 to 1800.
Historians argue that Britain saw many revolutions in the early modern period. There was the revolution that saw Catholicism largely replaced by Protestantism and the political revolution that swept away the absolute monarchy of Charles I. There were also revolutions in thought and culture, from the scientific revolution that gave us the theory of gravity, to the consumer revolution that gave us shopping. And just as important were the agricultural, industrial and printing revolutions that quite literally made the modern world a possibility, along with the extraordinary developments that made Britain into an empire of commerce, conquest, and enslavement.
As well as introducing these crucial themes, this module will give you the skills to understand how and why historians like to talk about these revolutions - and to figure out the limitations of their arguments. Did the emergence of parliamentary rule during the 17th century make much of a difference to the lives of women? Or were their lives marked by continuity? Did the average person witness meaningful changes when a handful of elite scientists started thinking differently about the workings of the universe? And does our picture of these transformations change if we focus on voices that - until recently - historians neglected?
This module is an introduction to the systemic and episodic violence that characterised Imperial British authority during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The specific topics for lectures and seminars include slavery, genocide, anthropology, photography, imperial sexualities, rebellions, and counterinsurgency. The module will draw on examples and analysis from a range of geographic areas: the Transatlantic, South Asia, Australia, East Africa, North Africa and the Caribbean.
We will explore recent debates about British imperial history and British identity. Has Britain ignored its imperial past? Should Britain apologise for its Empire and, if so, to whom?
Subsequent seminars will look at the ways in which violence was normalised as inevitable and necessary during imperial endeavours, both in the UK and in colonies. The final week will return to Europe’s late-colonial 20th century and discuss Aimé Césaire’s argument that European fascism represented the return of imperial violence to Europe.
What our students say:
‘The lectures were highly informative, and we were given a lot of support for completing the assignments, particularly as we had to create our own question.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘[The most valuable part of the module was] being educated on previously untold histories and being able to reflect on and begin to dismantle my own understandings of imperialism.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘The lectures were incredibly informative and eye opening, and were taught very clearly, with well written slides that made it easy to understand and make notes.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
This year-long module is focused on the development of your own writing. You will be encouraged to experiment with various forms and genres, to explore new approaches in drafting and editing your own work, and to develop the gentle art of responding to the work of fellow students. The lectures will introduce you to a range of exciting texts and helpful terminology, and offer insight from published authors. The follow-up workshops allow you to practice technique, mature your voice, and nurture your writerly instincts.
This year long module organises your study of literature through the frame of space, exploring a wide range of major ancient, modern, and contemporary texts, all of which relate to such particular places as archive, museum, castle, stage, mountain, sea, border, plantation, stage, glacier, womb etc. Some of the spaces we will have in mind relate directly to the historic city of Lancaster itself and to its wonderful location near to both the Lakes and the coast, and some of the spaces will relate most directly to places far away. You will study texts such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and Ali Smith’s How to Be Both.
The module concludes with a range of "mini-modules", each one focusing on a very specific place, or kind of place. Options may include: the North, the map, the church, the digital, the desert.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Ever since Edward Gibbon wrote his ground-breaking work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, historians have been preoccupied with the question of what caused the loss of the Empire’s western provinces and the transformation of its eastern half into Byzantium. They have identified much new data, but they continue to disagree as to what happened to the Empire between the 3rd and the 7th centuries CE and why.
For some historians the barbarian invasions of the late 4th and 5th centuries were crucial, but others have argued that they merely finished off a society that was already in deep moral, social and/or economic decline.
For other historians the Empire’s ‘decline and fall’ was a disaster; but others have maintained that the Empire never regressed. They believe that the foundations of medieval (and even modern) civilisation were forged in the cultural ferment of the later rather than the earlier Roman Empire, and that the barbarian takeovers in the West made little difference to the lives of those who lived there.
An introduction to this exciting period of history, this module invites you to discover what really happened and to assess the theories that currently command historians’ support.
What our students say:
‘The lectures covered the, at times very complex, content in a very easy to understand way’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘I enjoyed the breadth of the topic, I felt as if I knew a lot more in a short amount of time.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
This module examines the Second World War in Europe, approaching it from the Axis perspective – ‘the other side of the hill’, as Sir Basil Liddell Hart called it. The module engages not only with historically significant events, but it also deals with questions surrounding discrimination, complicity, and collaboration. We will discuss the different political movements, ideologies, and events that set Germany on its path to National-Socialism, and compare them to similar movements in Europe, opening up the opportunity to think about the different European racisms more broadly.
The choices available to the soldiers and civilians that were caught up in the war, the compromises they had to make, and the options available to them, run as a thread through this module. The module looks beyond Germany’s defeat and encourages students to consider the war’s long-term consequences.
What our students say:
‘Overall, I very much enjoyed this module. As someone who does not really enjoy learning about more modern history, I chose this module as it seemed like something that I had always wanted to know more about, as whenever I had been taught the Second World War it was always the same "good vs evil" narrative. This module gave me a newfound interest into the Second World War and fulfilled the desire to learn more about the topic rather than just going over the same things over and over.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘The amount of research and time that had been put into the lectures was clear and anytime I had any queries I would always get a helpful email back.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
This year-long module seeks to look beyond the boundaries of traditional courses in English Literature by enabling you to explore a wide and exciting range of literatures in English and in translation. These include texts that have influenced the development of literary English, from the Bible and classical figures such as Ovid and Homer, through to Medieval and Early Modern authors such as Dante and Rabelais. It also considers modern and contemporary world authors in translation (such as Kafka, Borges, Salih and Murukami), as well as new-media writing and the graphic novel. The module concludes with a creative-critical project which introduces students to the possibilities afforded here by creative modes of literary criticism.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year
Core
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This module is designed to support you in embarking on advanced historical research, and it aims to help you develop the skills needed to complete your undergraduate dissertation. Through this module, you will be guided through the cognitive and analytical steps you will need to take to define your future dissertation topic, construct a detailed research proposal, conduct a reflexive feasibility study for your project, present your preliminary findings, and respond to feedback from academics in the department.
The module aims to guide you to design your research proposal, locate it in its relevant historiographical field, test its viability and scope of available sources, as well as produce outlines, detailed structures and bibliographies for your project. The module makes use of both standard and innovative forms of delivery, with a combination of lectures, online talks, drop-in consultation sessions, and one-to-one consultation sessions with potential supervisors and course convenors.
What our students say:
‘The lectures greatly helped me in understanding how I will accomplish the dissertation.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘The guest speakers were particularly interesting and provided a lot of insight [...] which helped me understand how to use the archives themselves.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
This module aims to provide you with a solid introduction to the discipline of history at the beginning of your Part-II studies. The module, accordingly, explores the discipline at large, including: its characteristic practices, methods and traditions; its use of different source materials; and its relation not just to the past, but also to the present and the future.
The module includes three thematic blocks. The first section (Contexts of History) provides an overview of different types of historical scholarship, focusing on the methods, theories and intellectual tendencies that characterise them. The second section (Sources and Evidence) examines the use and application of different types of sources as evidence in historical research. The third section (History in Public) considers the public role and function of the discipline, as well as the challenges that historians have faced in the public spotlight, and, finally, the role that the study of history can play in your future.
What our students say:
‘I appreciated the perspective each lecturer brought on how history is written in their area of expertise. It was both fascinating and highly informative. The seminars were also very helpful and overall very good.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘I liked the seminars, and I liked the range of sources we learned about.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
This year-long module enables you to explore both what literary criticism currently is 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, and the animal, etc. We currently look at 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. You will have the opportunity to write in both short and long form, to present orally alongside fellow students, and to explore, if you wish, radically experimental modes of theoretical writing.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Optional
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This module invites you to explore the history of an object that is of crucial importance to our ideas about both human health and human identity – the mind. A Global History of the Mind will give you the opportunity to explore how societies across a wide range of times and places have sought to understand, cure and control the mind. Drawing on materials and case studies from around the world, whether modern-day Polynesia or the medieval Middle East, this offers a truly global perspective on the history of the mind.
At the same time, the module encourages you to explore the connections between changing ideas about mental health and sickness to broader questions about human identity – most notably those concerning race, gender and the potential loss of human distinctiveness in a world where artificial intelligence is possible. Unlike traditional courses on mental health, which almost invariably focus on the emergence and spread of western psychiatry, this module offers a decentered perspective. We will examine the mind from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, bringing together philosophy, medicine, religion, race, gender, and social control. In so doing, we will explore questions of urgent relevance to our own society – most notably the ways in which ideas about the mind have featured in the racialization and gendering of people through systems of patriarchy and colonialism. In addition, this module will use case studies from history to give you the resources to consider and question modern ideas about the mind and its role in society.
As well as completing a traditional essay assignment, this module includes a group podcasting assignment. Working together with your classmates, you will develop the skills to put together your own podcast on the history of the mind.
What our students say:
‘The seminars were wonderful. We looked at some quite complicated ideas, but the lecturer led them in a way that enabled us to think for ourselves and come to our own understandings on the topics, without making us feel stupid for not getting things straight away.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘I really enjoyed how the module looked at a lot of different periods/countries. It had a good range and was fascinating.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
This module explores American writing as part of a 'cultural declaration of independence' in the 19th century, with particular focus on literatures of dissidence and imaginative resistance including radical abolitionist writings.
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 we encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience, and a great range of writing in form and style. And we explore such 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?
Key writers usually include Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Rebecca Harding Davis, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs.
This module examines Russian history from 1825 through to the outbreak of the First World War, focusing on differences between Russia and the countries of western Europe. It explores the nature of the tsarist autocracy, seeing how successive governments sought to introduce social and economic changes that would allow Russia to become more modern, while preserving intact a traditional system of rule.
The module also examines the rise of the revolutionary movement from the 1850s onwards, discussing the tactics used in efforts to destroy tsarism, ranging from terrorism through to mobilising the working population of the cities and countryside against the government. While a good deal of attention is given to the various social and political pressures that exploded in the February Revolution, lectures and seminars encourage students to explore tsarist history as a fascinating subject ‘in its own right’, rather than simply as a prelude to the dramatic events of 1917.
What our students say:
Comments from anonymised student evaluations described the lectures as ‘fantastic’ and ‘very engaging’ and that the resources provided as ‘amazing’. Others noted that the tutor was ‘incredibly knowledgeable’.
20th-century British history is largely a story of change. The impact of democratisation, war, economic decline, the loss of empire, and internal fragmentation has resulted in a nation seemingly in constant flux, often unsure of its identity and its values.
In this module you will explore the patterns of social, economic, cultural and political change which have most affected the lives of the British since 1900. The overarching themes are the formation and reformation of identities based on class, gender, race, empire, nation, and the dual process by which the British were integrated into the state as citizens, and into the market as consumers. As well as being introduced to the key historiographical debates, in this module you will be encouraged to explore the subject through an eclectic mix of primary sources, including cartoons, posters, fiction, press reports, and advertisements.
What our students say:
‘The lectures were incredibly informative and helped me to understand core themes and historiography so I could go away to research it myself.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘Material was presented to both support and disprove ideas we were covering and well fleshed out. These were also the most detailed and interesting lectures I had this term, focusing on a specific decade on each but never forgetting to cover broader trends of history. It also allowed us to use alternative primary sources like posters, fiction and news coverage from the period in depth and showed them to be just as valuable as textual sources.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
This module explores colonial writing at the end of empire, the explosion of new national literatures in the era of decolonisation in the middle of the twentieth century, and contemporary writing that draws on and reinvents these decolonising commitments. Our interest throughout will be in how literature reflects and critiques imperial impulses and anxieties, and how literature undertakes the work of cultural, political, and psychic decolonisation. We read both exciting major writers, key to the canon of colonial and postcolonial literature, and new voices that grapple with the ongoing powers of empire and racism.
Migration is arguably the defining characteristic of the post-WW2 world. This module explores contemporary creative representations of migration in multiple modes - considering exile, expatriation, travel, urbanisation, and statelessness in literary genres that include fiction, memoirs, poetry and travel writing, as well as some visual media and philosophy. In particular, we critically examine the voluntary nature of migration, emphasising different kinds of displacement. The module, taught in a City of Sanctuary, draws on histories that encompass transatlantic slavery, the Holocaust, postcolonial and climate displacement, travelling cultures, globalisation, and an ongoing ‘refugee crisis.’
What does it mean to die? Does it hurt? Is it frightening? Will I see those I love again? What does it mean to kill, whether an enemy, a friend, or myself? Death is a universal human experience, a cataclysm, triumph or adventure we all confront. But how we do that has varied vastly across history. In the European Middle Ages, the Church’s doctrines shaped ideas of death, from burial in the consecrated ground of churchyards to the theology of heaven, hell and purgatory. The living and the dead were a community: those on earth could speed the dead through their passage in the afterlife, and those in heaven could intercede for the living. Yet at the margins lay a shadowy world, in which the restless dead returned to haunt those left on earth, and the despairing took their lives in an act known as ‘self-murder’.
In this module, we explore varied experiences of death across the medieval centuries in the Christian West, from end-of-life care to execution, and from battlefields to the Black Death. We discover the different means of investigating death, from the chronicles that describe the walking dead, to the archaeology of burial practice, and from murder trials to palaeogenetics, unlocking the passage of disease. This is, by nature, a disturbing field of study. But what we learn cuts to the heart of what it means to be human – in the past and today.
This course explores how American Literature has evolved from its colonial origins, with particular emphasis on key writing from the seventeenth to the nineteenth-centuries. What we call ‘American Literature’ and how we define America and ‘the American experience’ depends on who is writing and to whom.
We shall encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience, and a great range of writing in form and style. We pay particular attention to colonialism and freedom in the literature of early modern America, including rival ideas of self, nation, race and religion. And we explore questions such as: Why does the idea of America as a 'city on a hill' become so vital? How is the 'frontier' imagined? What strategies do writers use to challenge the hegemony of colonialism? Key texts usually include Native American Oral Literature and the writings of De Las Casas, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Jefferson, and Franklin.
HIST215: Introduction to Latin Translation for Undergraduates
This is a special intensive course for students who have little or no previous knowledge of Latin. The course concentrates on the basics of Latin Grammar and vocabulary as used in the Medieval period. However, it will also be very useful for students of the Roman and Renaissance periods. By the end of the course, students should be able to read sources such as title deeds, court rolls, government records, wills, and inscriptions.
This year-long module explores the adaption of literature to film and other media. We currently focus on how Austen’s so-called ‘classic’ Pride and Prejudice is adapted to classical Hollywood cinema, and how Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been adapted to both postmodern Hollywood and Bollywood cinema. We also explore the trajectories between Carroll’s Alice books and film animation, and how Dante’s Inferno has been adapted to a videogame. We study a range of other literary texts and media, ranging from children’s fiction to horror, social realism to science fiction, poetry to graphic novels, and reverential adaptations to outright parodies. The module includes a creative project that enables you to produce your own work of adaptation. This may take many forms – written, (audio)visual, digital, or three-dimensional -- and/or take the form of a game, or production, or performance, etc.
The details of this module (for example, the materials studied) vary from year to year.
This module focuses on the ways in which early modern English literature understood and represented love, sex and death and the connections between them. Reading texts from the late medieval period through to late seventeenth century, we explore how ideas about love, sex and death were shaped by discourses of religion, science, gender, marriage and the body, and how these changed over time.
Our readings are mainly be focused on topics designed to provide us with ingress into the literature, culture and historical vitality of the period. Poetry, prose and drama will be explored, and readings will range from the earthy late-medieval play Mankind to Milton’s capacious epic, Paradise Lost, and from the love sonnets of Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth, and John Donne to the dark and disturbing theatre of John Ford.
This module examines early modern literary representations of power, politics and place. We consider a broad range of genres (prose, poetry and drama), moving from the late medieval period’s interest in spiritual and earthly travel to the episodes of power, revolution and restitution that characterised Stuart rule (1603-1688). The module examines the literatures of political influence and change from the late fourteenth through to the seventeenth centuries, from John Mandeville’s marvellous journeys through Europe, Northern Africa, Asia and the Holy Land to the fantastical romances of Margaret Cavendish, and the brilliant and edgy theatre of Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson to the writings of revolutionaries such as John Milton and Margaret Fell and monarchist libertines like Aphra Behn.
We begin by understanding the full historical context of the French Revolution and the extraordinary impact this had on all areas of literature and thought. We examine revolutionary writing of the Romantic period, including the poetry of Anna Barbauld, William Blake, and William Wordsworth, and the prose of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Later we turn our attention to the emergence of the Gothic in the 1790s, and dives into this popular and lasting form.
The course aims to give students a sense of the diverse range of writers in this period. We use close knowledge of key texts to tackle broader, more abstract ideas such as: nature, the imagination, and the sublime. We will also consider literary ideas within a broader social, historical and philosophical context.
On this course we examine the relationship between politics and poetics for second-generation poets Anna Barbauld and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and then the remarkable and shocking slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and the orientalism of S. T. Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey. Finally, the course moves inward to explore the core theme of subjectivity and the self, a theme that finds expression in both positive and negative ways in Byron, Keats, Clare, and Smith.
In this module, you will explore the simultaneous rise of slavery and freedom in North America between 1620 and 1800. You will first examine the colonization of Massachusetts by Puritan migrants, and see how their liberty was constrained by gender relations, market dependency, and religious orthodoxy. Viewing the southern colonies in comparative perspective, you will explore the reasons why tobacco and rice planters transitioned from employing white indentured servants to enslaving Africans, and the racial codes that they developed to justify their decisions. You will understand how slave-holding American colonists could espouse discourses of liberty during the American Revolution, and the differing outcomes of the Revolution for Patriots, Loyalists, enslaved people, and Native Americans. You will conclude by studying the rapid expansion of slavery into the Deep South and the settlement of the trans-Appalachian frontier by free settlers after the Revolution. You will thus see how the United States—the “Empire of Liberty”—was forged in both slavery and freedom, creating a divided nation at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Given the extensive transformations experienced in the nineteenth century, it is no surprise that Victorian writers and thinkers reflected at length on matters of belief. These beliefs ranged from the public to the private, the collective to the individual, and included issues relating to politics, religion, economics, society, Empire, and so on.
In this module we explore: what people believed, why communities held those beliefs, and the experience of changing one’s beliefs and/or seeing those around you change their beliefs. We will think about such questions by looking at a range of material from the period, including fiction, poetry, and drama.
The authors we study will change from year to year but might include figures such as Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Christina Rossetti.
The nineteenth century saw widespread and rapid change across Britain. Responses to these changes varied enormously but looking back on the period it is noticeable how the Victorians were willing to experiment and test the boundaries of what was known.
In this module we explore that interest in experimentation by looking at a range of literature of the period, including novels, short fiction, and poetry. We think about experimentation thematically (e.g., science, spiritualism, vivisection) and formally (e.g., narrative perspective, fantasy, dramatic monologues, and sprung rhythm).
The authors we study change from year to year but might include figures such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, H.G. Wells, Charles Kingsley, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Browning, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Vernon Lee.
Optional
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In 21st Century Theory, we will build upon the general introduction to critical and cultural theory given on ENGL201 by focusing on one specific theme in contemporary theory: biopolitics. To explore biopolitics – or the politics of life itself – we will examine a selection of classic theoretical works by Michel Foucault, Georgio Agamben and others and then read them alongside some key literary and filmic texts from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go to the Batman Trilogy. This course will seek to address the following questions. What exactly is biopolitics? How have theorists, novelists and film-makers imagined such concepts as sovereign power, bare life, the state of exception and so on? To what extent might it be possible to resist the biopolitical hold over our political imaginary?
The traditional historiography of the Cold War focused predominantly on the United States and the Soviet Union, and the European theatre of the conflict. This module, in contrast, offers you a different, less Western-centric view of the Cold War. You will study the impact of the East-West struggle in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and how the course of the Cold War was affected by conflicts in the Global South. Thereby, you will learn that the Global Cold War was not only dominated by the two superpowers, but was also heavily influenced by Third World actors and lesser Cold War powers such as the People’s Republic of China.
The study of the Global Cold War is currently the most dynamic field in Cold War History and, probably, even in International History more generally. As a result, you will be able to engage with a vast body of international literature, and have the opportunity to carry out primary sources-based research. This is rendered possible by the availability of specific Cold War History document collections, national collections of diplomatic documents, as well as digital archives and document collections.
This module explores the origins of modern consumer society in Britain, introducing you to an exciting and innovative field of historical research. In the hundred years from the abolition of advertising tax in 1853 to the birth of commercial television in the 1950s, advertising became an omnipresent feature of modern capitalism. In this module, you will explore the causes and consequences of this process of commercialisation using a range of primary sources, from press reports and cartoons, to business archives, social surveys, and, of course, the advertisements themselves.
You will explore the changing relationship between people and their possessions, the impact of new shopping environments like the department store and the supermarket, and the rise of ethical consumerism. Advertising is political, and you will also examine how it helped Britain win two world wars and market the Empire to its own people. You will learn how advertisements work by designing your own advertising campaign in a particular historical context. By the end of the module, you will understand how advertising sells us much more than simply clothes or food, how it shapes the way we view gender and race, and how it creates support for a market economy based on the principles of freedom and choice.
What our students say:
‘I thoroughly enjoyed the module! My favourite aspects were to do with the psychology of advertising and how this impacted gender roles.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘I really enjoyed the variety that this module offers. Every week was a new topic and a new way to analyse different perspectives from the module period.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘I think the range of coursework styles for this module were really fun to complete.’ (Anonymous student evaluation)
The course will begin with writing that looks back to the First World War, and end with writing that anticipates the Second World War. In between, you will explore and interrogate the inter-war ‘moment’ through close attention to texts by such as D.H. Lawrence,Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and W H Auden. The course will focus on many of the great themes of the period such as exile, unemployment, Englishness, eugenics, militarisation, and political commitment, as well as many of the great cultural motifs of the period such as borders, radios, planes, cars, trains, cameras, and telephones. Close attention will also be paid to many of the great intellectual debates of the period such as the nature of history, the role of the State in everyday life, and the place of literary experimentation in time of war.
The details of this module (for example the texts or authors studied) may vary from year to year.
In this module we will look at a selection of biblical texts alongside literary works that appropriate, rewrite, and subvert them. We will be thinking about the Bible as literature; the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and literature; what the Bible does to a literary text. We will explore questions such as: in what ways does awareness of the Bible provoke more profound readings of a literary text? and does rewriting refine or subvert the Bible? We currently study work by such as Margaret Attwood, William Blake, Thomas Hardy, Angela Carter, John Donne, and Sylvia Plath, as well as Terence Mallick’s film The Tree of Life.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
This module will focus upon the motif of ‘the child’ within 20th and 21st century horror fiction and film, and aims to explore the cultural significance of this motif through analysis of themes such as innocence and evil, psychic powers, child abuse, parenting, technology and grief. The module will develop in students a sophisticated ability to think critically and analytically about how an exploration of popular fiction and film can reveal deep cultural anxieties and fixations at both historical and psychological levels. We currently explore literary texts such as Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898), Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now (1973), and Stephen King, The Shining (1977), and films such as The Bad Seed (1956), director Mervyn LeRoy, The Exorcist (1973), director William Friedkin, and Hereditary (2018), director Ari Aster.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of Middle Eastern literature in English and translation as one of the most exciting new areas of world literature. The region has experienced, so far this century, the ‘war on terror’, revolutions and wintery aftermaths, civil wars, sectarian violence, the rise and fall of ‘Islamic State’, and an ongoing refugee crisis. On this course, we will explore some of the shapes and styles of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, the concerns and aspirations that drive it, and its growing international visibility. We will study novels, short stories, and new genres from the region, in English and in translation. No prior knowledge is needed.
Course Outline:
This module is run by the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, with the support of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Engagement team and the central Careers Team. It aims to enhance students’ employability by providing an assessed work placement opportunity as an optional module It will also encourage students actively to think about the transferability of skills gained through the study of English Literature and/or Creative Writing.
The Department, via the FASS Engagement team, will set up a number of work placements in the (broadly defined) culture, heritage and creative sectors: with, for example, publishers, museums, newspapers, heritage sites, and arts venues. Students may alternatively source their own work placements, subject to prior discussion with the FASS Placements provider. Information on how to source a placement will be circulated to all enrolled students during summer.
Recent placements include: Copywriter at Copify; Publishing and Editorial Intern at Saraband; Project Assistant at Lancaster City Council; Communications Assistant at Three Left Feet Theatre Company.
Students must be prepared to pay their own transport/accommodation costs, though a small Departmental contribution toward travel can be applied for. It is expected that placements will be either close to Lancaster University or to the student’s home; many placements occur remotely. Students typically work for 30-40 hours with their host organization (not all of which will necessarily be on-site) in the Lent term.
They maintain contact with both the departmental course convenor and FASS placements team throughout the placement period. Placement providers are required to complete risk assessment and health and safety forms and to ensure an induction process. Both students and placement providers are required to sign a Learning Agreement.
Please note that you cannot take both this module and ENGL 376 Schools Volunteering.
Please also note that the maximum number of students on this course is fixed, and that in fairness to students, and in dialogue with the FASS Placements Officer, we have chosen to set up a selection process. If you choose this course, you will be sent an online form to complete as an application. The criteria will be enthusiasm, commitment, and having aspirations which can be realistically met on this module. You do not have to have prior placement experience, but it is fine if you do.
The Dissertation is a module that progresses from the methodological understandings acquired in Second-Year courses.
You will write a 10,000-word dissertation exploring a challenging historical problem. While, in many cases, we expect that the topic chosen will arise from courses you are studying, it should also be possible to accommodate topics which do not have a direct bearing on your taught courses. The aim is to give you the opportunity to work in depth on a topic of your choice, and to gain the satisfaction of working independently and of making a subject your own. Research for dissertations will usually combine work on secondary literature with the use of primary sources (in translation where necessary). You are expected to demonstrate knowledge of the wider historical context of the subject being explored by including a critical review of relevant published work and to show an awareness of the limitations of primary sources used.
Course Aims and Objectives:
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 third year, you will develop your research, thinking, and writing, as you build toward a maximum of 10,000 words. You will be supported throughout by your appointed supervisor with whom you will have a series of one to one tutorials. In addition, there are two overview lectures (one in the Michaelmas Term and one in the Lent Term) as well as four research skills seminars.
Almost anything is possible: some students explore famous literary names or themes, whilst others explore obscure figures and unusual topics; some draw on the University Library’s special collections or those housed within The Ruskin Library, whilst others go way beyond Lancaster to develop their research; some are inspired by the medievalism of historic Lancaster or the Romanticism of nearby Lake District, whilst others are drawn to the far textual shores of the digital world; some build towards MA study, whilst others build toward the world of work; and, finally, some write in classic literary critical styles, whilst others push the boundaries of literary studies in all sorts of new and startling ways.
Recent topics have included:
Living in Liminality, Finding Yourself: Muslim Women's Boundary Negotiation and Identity Formation
How is the Value of Sacrifice Presented in Post-War Japanese Literature?
A Storm in Five Acts: King Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walter Benjamin
Academia and Ecclesia: Following the Academy After the Church
Playing with Time: Queer Temporality in Video Games
“Out of the ash / I rise” : An Exploration of the Editing of Sylvia Plath’s Posthumous Publications and Legacy
A Divine Being and a Fallen World: Milton's Justification of God's Ways to 17th Century England
Virginia Woolf’s Paintings: Visual Arts and the Figure of the Artist in the Writings of Virginia Woolf
Understanding the Effects of War on Children through World War Two Literature
Green Romanticism: An Ecocritical Reading of William Wordsworth and Mary Shelley
Kaleidoscopic Epistemology in the world of Anna Kavan
“You'll be hungry all the time”: Food and Hunger in Jim Crace and Samuel Beckett
RS Thomas: Post-Romanticism and Spirituality
The details of this module may vary from year to year.
This module will explore how objects defined as ancient, beautiful or ugly, antique, artistic or collectable reflect the history of British Imperialism in South Asia. From the end of the eighteenth century, European scholars and bibliophiles were fascinated by Indian landscapes and objects. Sculptures and architecture could be described as beastly and regarded as dangerously erotic or they could be lauded as worthy of emulation. The pursuits of art history and archaeology were used to justify the necessity of foreign power in India. Antiquities were classified according to religious and chronological divisions, separating 'Buddhist', 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' materials. Museums and Art Schools were established to teach western aesthetic mores and technologies. By the end of the nineteenth century, Indian artists and art historians rejected these understandings of Indian art and art was used to challenge the colonial state.
The course will familiarise you with a range of sculptural, painted and architectural forms from India and the changing interpretation of those objects. The objects we will explore date from the third millennium B.C. to the 1940s.
The 13th century began with a rebellion that sought to cast a tyrant from the throne of England, followed after fifty years by a revolution, in which a party of barons and bishops backed by a vast popular following seized power from the king and set up a council to govern in his stead: a move that was utterly radical. This period has been hailed as the foundation of the enlightened democracy we enjoy today – but the reality is far darker. This was a world in which religious leaders had the power to punish kings, where rebels fought as sworn crusaders, and where people willingly went to their deaths for a political cause believing themselves martyrs. This world was not democratic, but theocratic.
In this module you will explore the major events of the period, in England and across Christendom; from the making of Magna Carta and the Fourth Lateran Council, to the Albigensian Crusade, the seizure of power in 1258, and the bloody Battle of Evesham that brought the end of England's First Revolution. You will meet the people who shaped this world – from powerful queens like Blanche of Castile and Eleanor of Provence, to leading knight William Marshal and the masterful pope Innocent III; from tyrannical and hapless kings to the churchmen who defied them and were recognised as saints; and from Simon de Montfort, the revolution's charismatic and brutal leader, to the low-born men and women who flocked to his banner. You will be able to uncover their stories through their letters, testimonies, and eye-witness accounts, and a wealth of other primary sources.
Through a range of topics, you will be able to explore your particular interests – whether in the political, religious, military, gender or social aspects of this period – and consider the big questions arising from this module: what can move women and men, poor and rich, to risk their livelihoods, to take life and give their own to decide who ruled the realm?
What our students say:
'Teaching is excellent and the seminars were a great opportunity to discuss our own ideas and talk things through with an expert in the field. The seminars were something I looked forward to every week and we had the opportunity to explore many of the primary source material for ourselves.' (Anonymous student evaluation)
'Many parts [were the most valuable] – from the development of a close-knit group, to the challenging yet interesting assessment work, to the feeling of really ‘mastering’ the subject.' (Anonymous student evaluation)
The labelling of the Second World War as the People’s War in Britain draws attention to the importance of the men and women who waged it. With the blurring of the Home and Battle Fronts, the conventional gender contract in which men fight to protect the vulnerable at home and women keep the home fires burning was challenged, not least by the revolutionary act of conscripting women to the war effort.
In this module you will examine how the Second World War was experienced by a wide spectrum of British men and women, some of whom identified with the war effort, some of whom were deliberately excluded, or chose to challenge gender conventions in their choice of role. You’ll consider different categorisations of experience (military/civilian; home front/battle front; male/female) and explore whether there was a hierarchy of service and subsequently of remembrance.
Were gender roles in Britain really transformed by the exigencies of war? Through a wide range of written and visual sources, including autobiographical materials, poems, photographs, films, parliamentary minutes, newspapers, posters and cartoons, we will seek to understand individual and collective experiences of the war, and their gendered dimensions.
What our students say:
‘The lecturer for the module has been incredible. He has made each seminar interesting and engaging, and a genuinely enjoyable experience each week. Also, the lecturer’s feedback in class and on assignments has been both constructive and encouraging, and it is thanks to him that I have seen a huge improvement in my work throughout the year’. (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘This is by far my favourite module I have done during my time at Lancaster, the content was engaging and the module was very well structured. The lecturer’s enthusiasm for his subject made each lesson exciting and especially informative. We were given excellent guidance for each assessment and consistently encouraged to think independently and imaginatively about each topic’. (Anonymous student evaluation)
This year-long course offers an in-depth exploration of the Gothic mode from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century. It is split into five sections: Defining, Localising, Salvaging, Haunting and Transforming. These themes have been chosen to enable the combination of traditional Gothic concepts (ghosts, monsters) with new theoretical ideas addressing a range of topics including gender, sexuality, decolonisation, and environmental crisis. A small selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts, incorporating both canonical and less familiar works, introduce key concepts and establish a foundation for approaching a diverse and challenging collection of contemporary works. These will cover anglophone writing in a variety of literary forms, including long and short-form fiction, drama, and the graphic novel. Asking the question of what Gothic *does*, rather than what Gothic *is*, the module aims to challenge preconceived opinions, boldly enter difficult territories, and show how Gothic may be used as a critical tool to address some of the most pressing questions facing contemporary Western culture.
Today the claim that God designed everything in the universe has given way to the theory of evolution. The usual story of this change is one of conflict between science and religion. This module, however, will challenge the popular narrative.
Focusing on the period 1450 –1800, we will reconsider the rise and fall of the idea that nature was the work of a divine intelligent designer. As well as trying to understand why the design argument became so important in the early modern period, we will seek to understand why it fell out of favour during the 18th century – long before the theory of evolution.
But we will not simply be studying the history of ideas. To understand the role of design in early modern science, we will study a wide range of disciplines and practices – from intellectual disciplines like philosophy, rhetoric and theology, to material practices including chemistry, architectural design, archaeology and art.
What our students say:
‘The course structure, teaching and seminars were the most engaging and useful I’ve had over my three years at university’. (Anonymous student evaluation)
‘The engaging and interactive seminars allowed for a comfortable environment which made the subject more interesting and enjoyable’. (Anonymous student evaluation)
This module will give students the opportunity to study all the major works of one of the most celebrated novelists in English literary history. It will combine close attention to the stylistic textures and narrative strategies of Jane Austen’s fiction with broader consideration of key themes and preoccupations such as friendship, desire, matchmaking, snobbery, illness, resistance, transgression and secrecy.
Film historians consider 1939 to be ‘the greatest year in the history of Hollywood,’ a year in which 365 films were released and 80 million tickets sold. This module considers how literature and film interact and conflict in that year to construct mythologies of the American past and present in the context of the Great Depression and on the eve of the Second World War. The module also considers the context of Hollywood, the functions of motion picture palaces, American film’s relationship to British literature, and more. Texts currently studied include John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937), Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1846), and Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and films such as Mr Smith Goes to Washington, director Frank Capra, Gunga Din, director George Stevens, and Gone with the Wind, director Victor Fleming.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Friedrich Nietzsche was far from alone in suggesting that God had died by the end of the nineteenth century; however, the literature of the fin de siècle (c. 1880-1914) paints a very different picture from the one offered by those who suggest that religion simply disappeared. A number of prominent writers in the period converted to Catholicism, whilst others explored the permeable boundaries between orthodox belief and esoteric spirituality. Those who turned to literature to think about religion did so in a wide variety of ways: experimenting with form, narrating religious experience, exploring the relationship between spirit and matter, and thinking about religious practice in ways both conventional and bizarre. Texts currently studied include: Oscar Wilde, Salome, G. K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown, and poetry produced by the Decadent movement.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Is it possible to ‘read’ a painting? Can an artist interpret a poem in paint? This module addresses the complex relationship between literature and the visual arts, tracing key debates in aesthetic theory from Romanticism to the twenty-first century. Literature and the Visual Arts will begin with an introduction to key critical terms and an examination of the painting-inspired poetry of, for example, John Keats and W. H. Auden. Subsequent seminars will explore the work of figures such as William Blake, John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites who blur the distinction between literature and art; the revival of the Pop Art tradition and postmodern narrative practices; the advent of photography; and, finally, the fusion of word and image in graphic novels including texts such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. The module will draw on the unique resources of the University’s Ruskin Library and rare book archive.
What did theatre look like before Shakespeare? How were devils and vices, divinity and virtue, coronations and carnivals staged during the Medieval period? This module will introduce you to a range of medieval drama, including mystery cycles, civic pageantry, morality plays and interludes, as we explore the weird and wonderful drama of towns, cities, and courts, and look at some of the earliest professional companies to identify the distinctive features of medieval English theatre. As well as reading texts, you will watch recordings of modern performances of medieval theatre. NB No prior knowledge of Middle English is required --the use of modern translations is encouraged to aid understanding.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
This course examines the early twentieth-century explosion of literary experimentation known as Modernism. Often this explosion is understood as a movement that ends around 1939; however, this course explores the ways in which Modernism continues, through and beyond the Second World War, as a restless spirit of experimentation. The course, then, has two parts. In the Michaelmas Term we explore ‘Modernisms Then’ (c1900 to c1939) where all students study major modernist texts – these usually include work by such as T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and authors involved in the Harlem Renaissance. In the Lent Term we explore ‘Modernisms Since’ (c1939 on) where each student chooses two 4-week min-modules from a range of options – these options usually include such options as: ‘British Migrant Modernisms;’ ‘The Woodcut Novel: Stories Without Words’; ‘Late American Modernisms’; and ‘Godot On – The Later Samuel Beckett.’
How are acts of desire, murder, fake and ‘real’ deaths represented on stage in early modern drama and how are these experiences gendered? This module will explore both the construction and deconstruction of death, desire, and genders, by focusing on performance. The performativity of gender, on stage and beyond, was materialised in the theatres of early modern England where boys played female roles, thus often representing both female desire and same-sex desire at the same time. We will study texts by Marlowe, Middleton, Heywood, Webster, Wroth as well as some contemporary productions and film adaptations. We will also engage in some short practical explorations -- such as getting the text ‘on its feet’; and the module will culminate in a series of short presentations and performances by the group. No previous experience of (or expertise in) acting is necessary.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
It’s an illuminating fact that the very phrase ‘climate change’ was first deployed by colonising thinkers who wanted to transform local environments to serve their purposes. Today, it is clearer than ever that the catastrophic effects of global climate change will be most keenly felt by the global poor, especially in colonised or postcolonial spaces. This module explores how postcolonial writing, from a variety of locations, grapples with environmental change, crisis and collapse, especially the looming spectres of the so-called ‘Anthropocene.’ We’ll read established and emerging voices from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Texts currently studied include: Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, J M Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K, and V S Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
It has been argued that the Gothic, and the rise of the Gothic novel, is part of a history that goes back to long before the eighteenth century. This module therefore coins the term ‘Premodern Gothic’ to consider some of the ways in which a range of generically diverse texts produced in England between c.1450 and 1600 engage with Gothic tropes and sensibilities (ghosts, vampires, castles, darkness, magic, terror, and wonder etc.) long before the rise of the Gothic novel. Texts currently studied include: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and Thomas Nashe’s The Terrors of the Night.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
This module enables you to explore both critically and/or creatively the relationship between literature, film, and music, both digital and analogue. The module is designed to be suitable for those with and those without musical expertise.
Focussing on a wide range of literary texts, films, and music, the module will develop both close-reading and close-listening and pay particular attention to the ways in which text and sound both interact and fuse.
Themes will vary and could include:
sonic cosmogonies
film score
improvisation
error
citation
jazz (re)production
lyricism
orality
the commons of hip-hop
sampling
both de- and re- territorialization
We employ diverse assessment methods designed to develop your skills further; so, for example, this could take the form of a project such as a sonic-textual response to a literary text and a related piece of music (you submit, that is, a song, session, remix, or playlist) or a critical text written in the style of an album review (you submit, that is, a poetical reflection, or listen-and-describe explication).
Texts, films and music studied will vary from year to year but may include C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Saturday Night Fever (dir. John Badham), Amadeus (dir. Milos Forman), The Pianist (dir. Roman Polansky), Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool (dir. Stanley Nelson), Emese Kurti’s Screaming Whole, Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa’s Black Quantum Futurism Collective, Eknath Easwaran’s The Upanishads, and Across the Universe (dir. Julie Taymor).
This module is run as a partnership between the Department of English Literature & Creative Writing and the University’s Schools Outreach Office, and normally involves a 10-week placement in a local school. This will usually include classroom observation, teacher assistance, and the opportunity to design and develop a teaching-related ‘special project’ to be conducted with a designated group of students or the class as a whole. This will enable you to develop confidence in communicating your subject, as well as an increased awareness of the roles of schools and universities in educational processes and structures.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
This module will trace the development of science fiction (or SF) in literature and film, providing an insight into the conventions of the genre and, in particular, how the key themes of the science fiction genre have been successfully adapted for the screen. It will encompass narratives of time travel, evolution, and temporal dislocation, and consider journeys, encounters, and species, as well as questions of human subjectivity, gender, race, transcendence, love, and loss. Work currently studied include texts such as: H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895), Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979), and Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019); and films such as: La Jetée (1962) 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and Arrival (2016).
The details of this module (for example the texts or authors studied) may vary from year to year.
Ben Jonson claimed of Shakespeare ‘he was not of an age but for all time.’ This course examines Shakespearean drama and poetry in its own time: as a platform in which early modern debates about agency and government, family, national identity, were put into play, and in relation to how we perceive these issues now. The stage was and is a place in which questions of gender, class, race, gain immediacy through the bodies and voices of actors. By examining texts from across Shakespeare’s career, we will explore their power to shape thoughts and feelings in their own age and in ours. We will consider Shakespeare’s manipulation of genre (poetry, comedy, history, tragedy and romance) and the ways the texts make active use of language (verse, prose, rhyme, rhythm) and theatrical languages (costume, stage positions) to generate meaning. The course will consider how, in the past and in the present, Shakespeare’s texts exploit the emotional and political possibilities of poetry and drama.
As part of their assessment for this course, students may opt to take part in a full-scale public performance of one of the plays we have studied; this is usually staged at Lancaster Castle.
Working in a small group, you’ll select a written text, ancient or modern, obscure or well known, and together with other students work on converting the text into wholly new format. For example, this might be:
A scholarly edition, a visual or digital adaptation
An exhibition for a heritage space
A podcast
An art installation
A fashion show
The brief will be to increase accessibility to, and awareness of, the selected text. In short, you will be taking the text “out of the box.”
Through a series of tutor-led workshops, you will be introduced to the processes and principles of adaptation.?
The module is designed to give you experience of the kind of work undertaken in industries such as heritage, journalism, and publishing.
This module examines the work of three of the great writers of the Romantic period: the poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, and the novelist Mary Shelley. Famously, these three writers lived and worked together during the summer of 1816, an episode that produced two of the dominant myths of modern literature – Frankenstein (in Mary Shelley’s novel) and the Vampire (in a story based on Byron by another member of the group, John Polidori) – both of which we will examine. Throughout their careers these writers were engaged in a creative and critical conversation with each other that addressed major themes including: conceptions of the heroic; the possibilities of political change; literary, scientific and biological creation; empire, slavery, and the East; transgressive love; gender roles; and the Gothic. The module will provide an opportunity to study in detail these writers’ works, and to consider them within their historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
This module is centred upon understanding Children’s Literature as a genre which evolves over time and doing so in the context of the places and spaces of fiction. Our two core themes are: first, the gradual move away from highly didactic reading that must teach children a clear moral lesson, towards reading for pleasure and enjoyment; and, second, the effect of this shift on spatial representation in the texts. We will compare the relationship between realist and fantastic spaces and consider the reason so many children's books are "bridge" texts that start and end in the real with the main narrative set in a fantasy world. Texts usually studied include: Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Robinson Crusoe (1719), The Water Babies (1852), Peter Pan (1901), The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937), and The Borrowers (1952).
This course explores twentieth and twenty-first century texts about the city that use Gothic generic conventions and modalities. The built environments of the Gothic are often plastic and mutable, the setting for animate, changeable, and malevolent forces. We will explore the ‘architectural uncanny’ and the ‘urban sublime,’ and consider how traditional elements of Gothic fiction are pressed to new ends in response to changing sensory, social and political contexts of urban space and place. While most sources will be textual (currently: Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (1985), N. K. Jemisin, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month (2018), Caitlín R. Kiernan, 'Goggles (c.1910)' (2012), and Patrick McGrath, Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (2005)) these will be complemented with reference to screen media, fine art, graphic novel and UrbEx photography.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
In the Victorian period, the decaying castles, corrupt priests and ancestral curses that were so prominent in the first phase of the Gothic novel gave way to an increased emphasis on spectral and monstrous others: ghosts, witches, werewolves, vampires, mummies and other creatures of the night. The module will explore these phenomena in their historical, cultural and literary contexts, with particular focus on emerging discourses of gender, sexuality, colonialism and class. The module will pay special attention to visual aspects of the Gothic, examining book illustration, painting and photography from the period and their relationship with Gothic texts. Students will be asked to consider the relationship between newly emergent forms of modernity (from medical discourses to photography) and the preoccupation with history and the past that is a generic feature of the Gothic. Texts will comprise a selection of novels and short fiction, with additional images and extracts from contextual works provided online and in class.
This module is centred upon three new genres which emerge in the mid-late Victorian period: Detective Fiction; The Adventure Story; and Children’s Fiction. Why do these new forms appear when they do? What determines them? We will spend three weeks on each, focussing on key texts and writers within the emerging genre, and looking at how certain conventions, principles, and core concerns develop for new genres as well as considering issues of literary status and canonicity. Within each session we will explore texts in terms of overlapping themes within a genre and the issues they raise for how we interpret the subject; these themes include: Colonialism, Imperialism, Gender, and Education. Texts currently studied include: R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island, J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, F.H. Burnett, The Secret Garden, and E.E. Nesbit, Five Children and It.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf famously asks, ‘what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister?’ This module follows Woolf’s lead by seeking to redress the historical marginalisation of women writers in the English literary canon through an exploration of: how women have come to writing at different historical moments; and what they have chosen to write, and how. A selection of texts from the 17th century through to the 21st, encompassing autobiographical forms, the novel, poetry, and drama, are used to examine relationships between gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and literary production, and to explore continuities, connections, and disparities between different representations of female experience. Texts currently studied include: Pat Barker, Regeneration (1990), Jackie Kay, The Adoption Papers (1991), Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987), Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (2006), and Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere Journals (1800-3).
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Fees and funding
Our annual tuition fee is set for a 12-month session, starting in the October of your year of study.
You will be able to borrow many books free of charge from the university library, however most students prefer to buy their own copies of at least some of the texts. Costs vary depending on whether these are bought new or second hand.
There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.
Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.
College fees
Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small college membership fee which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.
For students starting in 2025, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses.
Computer equipment and internet access
To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated IT support helpdesk is available in the event of any problems.
The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.
Study abroad courses
In addition to travel and accommodation costs, while you are studying abroad, you will need to have a passport and, depending on the country, there may be other costs such as travel documents (e.g. VISA or work permit) and any tests and vaccines that are required at the time of travel. Some countries may require proof of funds.
Placement and industry year courses
In addition to possible commuting costs during your placement, you may need to buy clothing that is suitable for your workplace and you may have accommodation costs. Depending on the employer and your job, you may have other costs such as copies of personal documents required by your employer for example.
The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your fee status.
Home fees are subject to annual review, and may be liable to rise each year in line with UK government policy. International fees (including EU) are reviewed annually and are not fixed for the duration of your studies. Read more about fees in subsequent years.
We will charge tuition fees to Home undergraduate students on full-year study abroad/work placements in line with the maximum amounts permitted by the Department for Education. The current maximum levels are:
Students studying abroad for a year: 15% of the standard tuition fee
Students taking a work placement for a year: 20% of the standard tuition fee
International students on full-year study abroad/work placements will be charged the same percentages as the standard International fee.
Please note that the maximum levels chargeable in future years may be subject to changes in Government policy.
Scholarships and bursaries
You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.
You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status:
Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.
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We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.
Download the course booklet to find out more about Lancaster University, how we teach English Literature and what you'll study as an English Literature student.
During your first year, you'll have the chance to explore subjects ranging from ancient to modern history, while choosing from a set of optional modules.
Our second- and final-year historians choose from within an extensive range of modules, personalising their degree to suit their own interests and passions.
Here you'll find recommendations from our lecturers to help you get ready to become an undergraduate historian.
Digital Scholarship Lab
The Digital Scholarship Lab in the Library provides a dedicated space for History students and students of other disciplines to work together, plan research, interact and share ideas. This flexible space is equipped with specialist Digital Humanities software, and it is designed to enable students and researchers to come together, connect and develop their ideas further, all within the iconic new extension to the library building. With help at hand from expert library staff, you can use the equipment to support work on original materials including very early manuscripts and books, as well as more modern materials such as slides, postcards and pamphlets.
The information on this site relates primarily to 2026/2027 entry to the University and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.
The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.
More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information.
Our Students’ Charter
We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. View our Charter and other policies.
Undergraduate open days 2025
Our summer and autumn open days will give you Lancaster University in a day. Visit campus and put yourself in the picture.
Take five minutes and we'll show you what our Top 10 UK university has to offer, from beautiful green campus to colleges, teaching and sports facilities.
Most first-year undergraduate students choose to live on campus, where you’ll find award-winning accommodation to suit different preferences and budgets.
Our historic city is student-friendly and home to a diverse and welcoming community. Beyond the city you'll find a stunning coastline and the world-famous English Lake District.