Our modules are delivered over one year full-time or two years part-time. Your degree will total 180 credits: all modules are 20 credits, apart from the dissertation which is 60 credits. In any given year, four subject modules (subject to staff availability) will run in addition to Research Methods and Literary and Critical Theory.
"Juvenile Trash": Rethinking Genre Fiction
Genre fiction is often seen as frivolous and less important than 'serious' literary fiction. In this module we 'rethink' genre fiction, digging deeper to evaluate the aesthetics, politics and undeniable value of genre fiction. In our seminars, we explore a range of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, crime fiction, historical fiction, romance, and children's literature. We examine the way in which various texts – Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Octavia Butler's Kindred, Walter Mosely's Devil in a Blue Dress, or Sarah Waters's Fingersmith, for instance – show that genre fiction can both entertain and challenge.
Literature and Landscapes
This module aims to examine the interrelation of aesthetic and cultural theories, social contexts, and literary representations of landscape, with a particular focus on nineteenth-century literature. It aims to critically engage you in theories relevant to the intellectual, cultural, historical and sociological pressures underlying the various responses to experiences of space and place and considers how the idea of landscape is experienced and represented for different identities in a range of literary and visual texts.
Reading The City: From Modernism to the Twenty-First Century
This module introduces you to the socio-geographical significance of the city as a literary space. This space is neither sterile nor merely 'setting'. We explore how the city is an active participant in the narratives of the primary texts. Students are also able to chart the social history of the city over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, addressing the dramatic shifts in society and politics in that time. The module asks you to think critically about the city-space and the literature–society interconnection across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This will lead to a thorough exploration of the ways that writers respond to and shape social responses and engagements with space.
Adaptations, Transformations, Rejections
This module asks you to think critically about the continuing influence of significant literary phenomena, whether authors (such as William Shakespeare) or texts (such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein). To do so, students will examine the primary text(s) and compare it/them with subsequent interpretations. This will lead to a thorough exploration of the ways that modern and contemporary writers, artists, and filmmakers adapt, transform, and reject the phenomenon's legacy. Additionally, students will explore and apply theories of adaptation that encompass commemoration, memorialisation, translation, and postmodernist pastiche.
Making Trouble: Gender and Sexuality in Literature
This module aims to examine the shifting paradigms of gender and sexual identities from the late 19th century to the present day, with reference to social, cultural and political changes, through a range of texts. We will examine the way that writers have challenged, or troubled, conventional notions of gender and sexual identities and used literature to imagine or write into existence alternative ways of being. Through a selection of fascinating authors — for instance, Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, Carson McCullers, James Baldwin, Jeanette Winterson, and Alison Bechdel — you will develop a sophisticated understanding of debates, theories and ideas relevant to the topics of gender and sexual identities.
Special Author Topic: The Writer and Their Work
This module is a research-led module that offers you the chance to engage with a single author specially selected by the module leader. The module will explore the contexts significant to the author—social, political, historical, critical - and also consider the relevance of the author's biography. The majority of the module will be spent reading the author's prominent texts, evaluating their impact on the canon and judging their inclusion in the history of English literature.
Literary and Critical Theory
This module introduces you to the major coordinates of literary and critical theory as it emerged in the twentieth century. You may cover theories such as semiotics, Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Formalism, New Criticism. You may also be introduced to politically-inflected theories such as those deriving from Marxism and cultural materialism, as well as feminist and queer theories. Students may also cover psychoanalytical, postcolonial and critical race theories, as well as more modern postcritical readings.
Research Methods
In this module you will be encouraged to compare and understand the alternative conceptual and technical approaches to research in English Studies. During lectures, seminars, and workshops, as well as during hours of independent study, we will review and critically evaluate the relevant, current literature in English Studies to provide you with a well-rounded toolbox to apply to your other modules. We will also focus on the methodological frameworks within which to undertake research and the ethical and political implications of these. Finally, students will develop skills and confidence in the application of a range of techniques and methodologies as well as an understanding of their responsibility and position as researcher.
Dissertation
The Dissertation module provides you with the opportunity to undertake a sustained, rigorous and independent investigation of a specialised topic in literary studies.
This MA English Literature degree is taught by leading researchers and published scholars. Our expertise spans literature from the 16th century to the present day. Dr Nick Taylor-Collins is a specialist on William Shakespeare, modern Irish literature, and literary theory; Dr Carmen Casaliggi's is an expert in Romantic literature; and Dr Elizabeth English is a specialist in modernist literature and culture, early twentieth-century genre fiction, and women's writing.
Most modules are taught through lectures, seminars, and online delivery. Some modules will also include individual tutorials and the dissertation module is delivered largely through one-to-one tutorials with your supervisor.
Our modules are supported by our Virtual Learning Environment, Moodle, with designated course pages which carefully detail each week's topic and reading. All course materials (apart from primary texts) are made available in advance via this platform, which you can access remotely. Primary texts may be available online for free (if out of copyright) or will be stocked in our library.
All modules are 20 credits, apart from the dissertation which is worth 60 credits. In a 20-credit module you will receive 24 hours of timetabled teaching and you will be expected to conduct 176 hours of independent study. The 60-credit dissertation consists of a mixture of individual tutorials with your allocated dissertation supervisor (3 hours) and group tutorials (9 hours) and independent study (588 hours). Seminars are scheduled in the weekday evenings to be as inclusive and flexible as possible. If you are full-time, for instance, you will have classes on two weekday evenings each term (each evening session lasts two hours and is usually scheduled between 5pm and 7pm). In addition to this, you will study Research Methods in Term 1 and Literary and Critical Theory in Term 2. Research Methods is taught via four Saturday sessions of four hours each, four one-hour weekday tutorials, as well as non-scheduled online activities. Literary and Critical Theory is taught via four Saturday sessions of four hours, pre-recorded lectures, and online activities.
At Cardiff Metropolitan we recognise that student experience and outcomes can be enhanced through the support of a Personal Academic Tutor (PAT). You will be allocated a PAT when you join the University, who will support you on your educational journey and help you to make informed choices enroute to achieving your developing ambition, through both group and individual meetings.
The MA is also a great choice for those wishing to enhance their employment and professional opportunities in the arts or heritage sectors. The programme is also suitable for those who would like to become teachers of English Literature and Creative Writing as well as those who are already teachers and would like to enhance their expertise. For example, teachers of English at 'A' Level and GCSE often find the course suitable for professional development purposes, providing them with skills to enhance their teaching of English literature within their current curricula.
The course also prepares you for further study at PhD level at Cardiff Metropolitan University and beyond.
This degree will encourage you to develop the valuable transferable skills of autonomy, effective collaboration, self-direction, organisation, initiative and adaptability that are highly regarded in the workplace. A Master's degree in English Literature may lead to a variety of careers which include the particularly relevant areas of teaching, doctoral research, journalism, PR, publishing, the media, and employment in the public or voluntary sectors.