MA English

Overview

The English MA offers the best of both taught and research-focused postgraduate courses, enabling you to concentrate on your chosen assessments and individual interests while training you in the practical skills involved in humanities research. You will graduate equipped with the skills to pursue a wide variety of careers, from publishing to event management, teaching, research, or progression onto a PhD.

The flexible course structure will enable you to explore your independent research goals, while working collaboratively with others in similar fields across English studies and the Humanities. Past projects have often evolved into PhD projects, exploring topics such as African-Americans in fiction and film, the role of screenwriting in film adaptations and representations of the nine worthies in medieval and early modern writing. The choice and freedom to develop your own specialisms will help you to produce your best possible work and the curriculum is designed for you to build on your skills from one module to the next. This course is ideal for students who are self-motivated, with good time management and the ability to work independently, as these skills will be developed throughout.

You will examine a range of methods of research and investigate how approaches (e.g. feminist, Marxist, editorial, and adaptation) can be applied to literary texts. This will culminate in the designing of your own research project and the production of a sustained piece of writing.

The course also covers the practical skills involved in humanities research, ranging from first-hand experience of conference management, presenting work and writing for publication. You will be encouraged to participate in the DMU research community through research events, international conferences and networking with the Centre for Adaptations and the Centre for Textual Studies.

Teaching and assessments

At the beginning of the year, you will be asked to complete learning contracts in collaboration with your personal tutor which will identify the main areas you wish to pursue across the programme, such as Romanticism, adaptations, periodical writing or early modern printing, which will form the basis for all your assessments. For example, a student wishing to pursue the English MA in the area of Shakespeare and film, may wish to conduct a literature search on work on Shakespeare adaptations, write a book review on Russell Jackson’s Shakespeare and the English-speaking Cinema (2014), design a poster outlining the various film adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew, present a conference paper on Laurence Olivier’s 1948 film of Hamlet and write a dissertation on the Shakespeare films of Laurence Olivier.

Graduate careers

Students can undertake careers in a range of areas, including events management, teaching and further research including PhD research.