Program Overview

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Our department offers a distinctively comparative approach to the study of literature; at Essex you don’t just study English literature, you study world literature in English . You explore literature across time, geography, and genre, combining scholarly research with innovative, practical ways of engaging with texts. You grapple with the challenges of conducting research into Shakespeare and other early modern literature, and study a truly extensive range of work; your reading takes you from African American literature, through Caribbean literatures, to the literature and performance of New York, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow and London. This course is also available on a part-time basis. Why we're great.

• Explore an extensive range of world literature across time, geography and genre
• Join a diverse network of distinguished alumni including Booker Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners
• Meet fellow readers at the student-run Literature Society and our Myth Reading Group

Our expert staff

At Essex, we have an impressive literary legacy. Our history comprises staff (and students) who have been Nobel Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, and Pulitzer Prize winners. Our Department is a vibrant conservatoire of scholars and practitioners who are committed to unlocking creative personal responses to literature. This distinctive environment is possible because we are a community of award-winning novelists, poets and playwrights, as well as leading literature specialists. Our academic staff specialise in a range of areas including modernism, comparative and world literature, Shakespeare, the Renaissance, modernism, travel writing, nature writing, translated literature, cultural geography, U.S. and Caribbean literatures, and the history of reading.

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Specialist facilities

• Meet fellow readers at our department’s Myth Reading Group
• Write for our student media platform REBEL or host a REBEL Radio show
• View classic films at weekly film screenings in our dedicated 120-seat cinema, Cine10
• Learn from leading writers and literature specialists at weekly research seminars
• Our on-campus Lakeside Theatre has been established as a major venue for good drama, staging both productions by professional touring companies and a wealth of new work written, produced and directed by our own staff and students
• Improve your playwriting and performance skills at our Lakeside Theatre Workshops
• Our Research Laboratory allows you to collaborate with professionals, improvising and experimenting with new work which is being tried and tested

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Your future

A good literature degree opens many doors and our students have gone on to work in a number of careers such as writers, and others are now established as scholars, university lecturers, teachers, publishers, publishers’ editors, journalists, arts administrators, theatre artistic directors, drama advisers, and translators. . We offer supervision for PhD, MPhil and MA by Dissertation in different literatures and various approaches to literature, covering most aspects of early modern and modern writing in English, plus a number of other languages. Our University is one of only 11 AHRC-accredited Doctoral Training Centres in the UK. This means that we offer funded PhD studentships which also provide a range of research and training opportunities. We work with our Student Development Team to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities.