Program Overview

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Our MA Modern and Contemporary Literature degree offers a rich and unique perspective on the remarkable literature and culture of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. At Essex, you won’t just study the familiar canon of English literature; you will study world literature in English. You will explore literature across time, geography and genre, combining traditional scholarly research with fresh and innovative ways of reading and engaging with texts. As a postgraduate student of literature, you will have the opportunity to explore a broad and diverse range of types of writings, from lyric poetry to contemporary fiction, and study an array of literary and cultural traditions, from European literature of the early twentieth century to American literatures, including recent Caribbean writing. You will be able to construct your degree based on your interests, drawing on an extensive list of options, including modules on;

• Modernism and postmodernism
• Adaptation
• The environment and new nature writing
• Queer literature
• African American literature
• Themes of war, violence, conflict and human rights in literature
• Literature and translation in a global context
• Literature and film
• US avant-garde poetry

Based in our Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies , you’ll join a community of novelists, dramatists, story-tellers and poets. We’ve nurtured a long tradition of distinguished writers whose work has shaped literature as we know it today, from past giants such as the American poets Robert Lowell and Ted Berrigan, to contemporary writers such as mythographer and novelist Dame Marina Warner, and Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri. This course is temporarily suspended for October 2023 entry. Why we're great.

• Join a diverse network of distinguished alumni including Booker Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners
• Publish your own work in our annual creative writing journal, Creel
• Discover innovative practical ways of engaging with texts including theatre visits and archival research

Our expert staff

Our Department is a vibrant conservatoire of scholars and practitioners who are committed to unlocking creative personal responses to literature and creative writing. 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, Irish and Scottish writing, 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 magazine on our media platform REBEL or host a REBEL Radio show
• Publish your own work in our annual creative writing journal, Creel
• 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 and creative writing degree opens many doors and our students have gone on to work in a number of careers such as writers, editors, publishers, scholars, university lecturers, teachers, journalists, arts administrators, theatre artistic directors, drama advisers, and translators. We also 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 also work with our Student Development Team to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities.