Program Overview

Program Overview

The University of Kent offers a BA (Hons) in English Literature, a three-year full-time program that explores literature from across the globe and throughout the ages. The program empowers students to identify how the world is perceived and informed through literary narratives, providing a broad range of literary periods, topics, and themes to study.

Course Structure

The program is divided into three stages, each with its own set of compulsory and optional modules. Stage 1 introduces students to the relationship between form and context in literary studies, exploring a rich variety of literary forms from the medieval period to the present. Stage 2 examines the rise of European colonialism and slavery, the impact of wars and decolonization across the Global South, and the spread of globalization. Stage 3 allows students to create a guided independent project exploring their personal and/or professional interests.

Modules

• Stage 1:
  • Changing Literatures
  • Other Worlds: Dystopias and Futures
  • Adventures in Criticism
  • Romantic Ecologies: Literature, Environment and Climate Crisis
  • Creative and Critical Conversations
• Stage 2:
  • Shakespeare: Before and After
  • World Literatures in English
  • Right/Write to the World: Displacement, Social Movements, Political Action
  • Optional modules:
    • American Modernities: US Literature 1930 to the Present
    • Becoming America: From Poe to The Great Gatsby
    • Encounters with the Premodern
    • Modernism
    • Reading Victorian Literature
    • The Contemporary
    • When Novels Were Novel: Eighteenth-Century Literature
• Stage 3:
  • The Project
  • Optional modules:
    • A Woman’s Tale: Writing Female Identity and Experience in Medieval Europe
    • American Crime Fiction
    • Animals, Humans, Writing
    • The Brontës in Context
    • Centres and Edges: Modernist and Postcolonial Quest Literature
    • Cross-Cultural Coming-of-Age Narratives
    • The End of Empire: Post-Imperial Writing in Britain
    • Foundations of Activism
    • Global Capitalism and the Novel
    • Innovation and Experiment in New York
    • Magic, Marvels and Monsters in Medieval Literature
    • Marlowe vs Shakespeare
    • Perceptions, Pathologies, Disorders: Reading and Writing Mental Health
    • Places, Journeys, Borders
    • Queer Literature
    • Representing World War Two
    • #ShakeRace: Shakespeare and Racial Politics
    • The End of the World
    • The Gothic: Origins and Exhumations
    • The Love Poem: Romantic Language from Thomas Wyatt to Taylor Swift
    • The New Woman: First Wave Feminism and Women’s Writing
    • The Unknown: Reading and Writing Creative Non-Fiction and Autofiction
    • Virginia Woolf and the Novel

Teaching and Assessment

Teaching and assessment can vary between modules. All modules are taught by weekly seminars, and most literature modules also include a weekly lecture. Attendance at seminars is required, and for most modules, students are assessed on their seminar contribution/performance.

Entry Requirements

• Typical offer: 104-120 UCAS points
• A level: BBB
• Contextual offer: BCC
• BTEC: DMM
• Contextual offer: MMM
• IB: 120 tariff points - typically H5 H6 H6 or equivalent
• Contextual offer: 104 tariff points - typically H5 H5 H6 or equivalent
• International Foundation Programme: Pass the University of Kent International Foundation Programme
• T level: The University will consider applicants holding T level qualifications in subjects closely aligned to the course
• Access to HE Diploma: Obtain Access to Higher Education Diploma with 45 credits at Level 3 with 24 credits at Distinction and 21 credits at Merit

Fees and Funding

• Tuition fees for 2026 entry: TBC
• Fees for year in industry: £1,905
• Fees for year abroad: £1,430
• International tuition fees: £19,300
• Part-time (UK): TBC
• Part-time (International): £9,650

Career Prospects

Graduates entering high-skill roles can earn up to 48% more than non-graduates. A degree can boost average lifetime earnings by over £300,000. The program helps students plan for success, honing digital, critical thinking, communication, and leadership skills essential for a successful career and realizing their ambition.