English Literature

This is a Connected Degree

Portsmouth is the only University in the UK with the flexibility to choose when to do an optional paid placement or self-employed year. Either take a placement in your third year, or finish your studies first and complete a placement in your fourth year. You can decide if and when to take a placement after you've started your course.

Overview

When you study English Literature at Portsmouth, you'll also explore history and politics, society and culture, human relationships and identities, and how we choose to live. And you’re doing it in a city steeped in lively literature, from Charles Dickens to Neil Gaiman.

You’ll learn the skills to critically analyse the purpose, truth and impact of any written text. You’ll also develop the skills to produce your own writing and presentations, so you can communicate original ideas in ways that engage and influence readers.

The combination of creative thinking and rigorous analysis you develop will make you a compelling candidate for all kinds of jobs – from marketing to museums, and journalism to publishing.

Course highlights

• Discover our literary city with the constantly evolving Portsmouth Literary Map – your course begins with a tour of literary Portsea and the Dockyards area, introducing significant places in the lives of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, today's local writers, and plenty more

• Enjoy the freedom to interpret assignments creatively, and develop employable skills in presentation and teamwork, on a course without exams

• Learn directly from staff who produce world-leading research into areas as diverse as magical realism and representations of food

• Build specialist knowledge by choosing the topics that match your interests – from global literature to dystopian and apocalyptic environments, from women’s writing to crime writing

• Develop your own style and build up your portfolio by becoming a contributor to our Writing Literary Portsmouth blog

• Curate your own literary prize or produce a prize pitch, to experience what happens when writing meets the commercial marketplace

• Build a professional network with high-profile figures including authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, judges and critics through our contacts and partnerships

Optional pathways
There are optional pathways through this degree that let you combine your literature studies with another interest, leading to the following exit awards:

• BA (Hons) English Literature with History

• BA (Hons) English Literature with Media Studies

Careers and opportunities

This degree will set you up to pursue careers in fields where communication and critical thinking matter. Employers in many more industries recognise the value of the transferable skills you’ll gain during an English Literature degree. Your CV will demonstrate:

• sophisticated analytical skills, enabling you to assess texts on any topic

• the ability to think critically and reach your own conclusions

• a flair for presenting and discussing ideas with diverse audiences

• the confidence to say exactly what you mean to say, in writing and in person

• a creative mindset that helps you see things differently

• a well-developed sense of empathy and teamworking skills

What areas can you work in with an English literature degree?

After the course, you could work in areas such as:

• advertising

• journalism

• arts and media

• public relations

• copywriting

• teaching

• research

You could also study at postgraduate level.

Graduate destinations

Roles our previous graduates have gone onto include:

• copywriter

• journalist and editor

• marketing executive

• teacher

• paralegal

• sales executive

• museum curator

Our Careers and Employability service can help you find a job or course that puts your skills to work. After you leave the University, you can get help, advice and support for up to 5 years as you advance in your career.

Subject options

This course offers the following subject options:

Year 1
Core modules in this year currently include:

• Body Politics (40 credits)
• Global Identities (20 credits)
• Popular Culture (20 credits)
• The Short Story: Murder, Madness and Experimentation (20 credits)
• Unpacking Texts: Introducing Critical Theory (20 credits)

There are no optional modules in this year.

Year 2
Core modules in this year currently include:

• Literary Prizes and Public Acclaim (20 credits)
• Research in Practice (20 credits)

Optional modules in this year currently include:

• Bloody Shakespeare: the Politics and Poetics of Violence (20 credits)
• Crime Writing (20 credits)
• Dystopian and Apocalyptic Environments: Ecocrisis in the Literary Imagination (20 credits)
• Empire and Its Afterlives in Britain, Europe, and Africa (20 credits)
• Engaged Citizenship in Humanities and Social Sciences (20 credits)
• Global Security (20 credits)
• Intercultural Perspectives On Communication (20 credits)
• Marketing & Communication (20 credits)
• Modernity and Globalisation (20 credits)
• Nationalism and Migration: Chaos, Crisis and the Everyday (L5) (20 credits)
• News, Discourse, and Media (20 credits)
• Principles of Economic Crime Investigation (20 credits)
• Professional Experience L5 (20 credits)
• Puritans to Postmodernists: American Literature (20 credits)
• Space, Place and Being (20 credits)
• Transitional Justice & Human Rights (20 credits)
• Wildlife Crime: Threats and Response (20 credits)
• Women's Writing in the Americas (20 credits)

Placement Year (optional)
Have the opportunity to do an additional work placement year after your second or third year on this Connected Degree - we're the only UK university to offer flexible sandwich placements for undergraduates.

Year 3

Optional modules in this year currently include:

• Consuming Fictions: Food and Appetite in Victorian Culture (20 credits)
• Dissertation (English Literature) (40 credits)
• Holocaust Literatures (20 credits)
• Magical Realism (20 credits)
• Major Project (40 credits)
• Professional Development: Recruiters and Candidates (20 credits)
• Professional Development: Recruiters and Candidates (20 credits)
• Professional Experience L6 (20 credits)
• The Gothic (20 credits)
• Time, Temporality, Contemporary Fiction (20 credits)
• Us Masculinities (20 credits)

We use the best and most current research and professional practice alongside feedback from our students to make sure course content is relevant to your future career or further studies.

Therefore, some course content may change over time to reflect changes in the discipline or industry and some optional modules may not run every year. If a module doesn’t run, we’ll let you know as soon as possible and help you choose an alternative module.

You’ll be assessed through:

essays
textual analysis
presentations
a dissertation
real-world projects
creative assignments
You’ll be able to test your skills and knowledge informally before you do assessments that count towards your final mark.

You can get feedback on all practice and formal assessments so you can improve in the future.

The way you’re assessed may depend on the modules you select. As a guide, students on this course last year were typically assessed as follows:

Year 1 students: 100% by coursework
Year 2 students: 100% by coursework
Year 3 students: 100% by coursework