Program Overview

MA English Studies

The MA English Studies is a dynamic, taught postgraduate course that explores literature, film, television, and theory in a range of international contexts. This flexible and challenging masters course is delivered by a team of tutors with internationally recognized academic expertise in an array of specialist areas.

Course Overview

MA English Studies allows students to build their own bespoke masters experience, selecting from a range of modules to reflect their interests in the further study of English. The course can be studied on campus full-time in one year or part-time over two years.

Features and Benefits

• Accessible: An accessible masters degree that is taught in the evening.
• Based in Manchester: A diverse and creative city, designated as a UNESCO City of Literature (2017).
• Exciting opportunities: Take advantage of the department's involvement with heritage projects, festivals, conferences, libraries, the creative industries, and a varied program of literary/research events.
• Personal learning experience: Taught in small groups, students benefit from the expertise of research-active staff from whom they learn specialist subject knowledge, professional research skills, and conference presentation skills.
• Research quality: Ranked 8th out of 92 UK universities for Research Power in English Language and Literature (REF 2021).
• Industry connections: Students benefit from regular seminars by visiting speakers as well as a thriving conference schedule.
• Support for students: A personal tutoring system is in place, ensuring that all students have a tutor with whom they can discuss any aspect of their academic development.
• Academic expertise: Take advantage of the expertise of a number of research centers within the English department, which directly inform teaching across the different pathways.

Course Structure

• Core Modules:
  • Dissertation: All MA students submit a dissertation of 15,000 words.
  • Practices: The module introduces subject-specific and professional skills 'in practice'. It houses a research seminar series featuring papers/readings by leading academics and writers, which students are required to attend and reflect upon via a range of exercises using social media platforms.
• Option Modules:
  • American Spaces: Explores literary, cinematic, and theoretical constructions of space, place, nation, and the world in contemporary American culture.
  • Cultures of Disability: Explores key debates in critical and cultural disability studies and the critical medical humanities with reference to historical and literary case studies.
  • Games, Play, and Culture: Investigates games across media as modes of narrative and storytelling.
  • Narrating the Nation: Explores how postcolonial writers imagine the nation and construct the ‘native’ and originary identity in the context of decolonization and globalization.
  • Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture: Explores the reciprocal relationship between literature and culture with a focus on texts of the long nineteenth century in an interdisciplinary context.
  • Post-Millennial Gothic: Explores contemporary Gothic texts, including adaptations, neoliberal Gothic, digital Gothic, transnational Gothic, the New Weird, and the ongoing evolution of figures such as the vampire and the serial killer.
  • Postcolonial Trauma: Examines postcolonial texts that address traumatic histories, drawing upon both western and non-western readings of trauma.
  • The Rise of the Gothic: Provides a historical overview of the rise of Gothic literature from the Renaissance to 1900 and introduces current debates in Gothic Studies.
  • The Migrant Writer: Explores the impact of migration, displacement, and resettlement on the work of postcolonial writers from the diaspora, focusing on identity, globalization, and the refugee.
  • Trauma, Literature, and Film: Critically analyzes and explores the representation of major human catastrophes and resulting traumas in literature and film.
  • Twentieth-Century Gothic: Explores key Gothic texts of the twentieth century and the critical debates that inform understanding of them.

Entry Requirements

• Normally, at least an upper second-class (2.1) undergraduate UK honors degree (or international equivalent) in a related humanities subject, including a basic grounding in literature, film, or critical theory.
• Overseas applicants require IELTS with an overall score of 6.5 with no less than 5.5 in any category, or an equivalent accepted English qualification.

Fees and Funding

• UK and Channel Island students: Full-time fee £10,250 per year, part-time fee £1,709 per 30 credits.
• EU and non-EU international students: Full-time fee £20,000 per year, part-time fee £3,334 per 30 credits.
• Scholarships and funding opportunities are available for both UK and international students.

Careers Support and Prospects

• The program prepares students for careers in teaching, arts administration, advertising, film and television, publishing, media, journalism, business, public relations, politics, and other careers requiring critical awareness of aspects of contemporary culture and the ability to assimilate and present a coherent argument.
• Recent graduates have progressed to PhD study at Manchester Metropolitan University, and several have gone on to complete PGCEs.
• The 'Practices' core unit equips students with the skills needed to conduct academic research at the postgraduate level, as well as transferable skills appropriate for the professional workplace.