BA Hons English at Liverpool John Moores University
English
BA (Hons), BA, DipHE, CertHE single, joint or combined award, 3 years full-time, minimum 4 years part-time
Studying English at LJMU
‘The course has given me an understanding of how cultures work on a highly interactive level. The lectures, supervision and overall method of delivery were outstanding. I think of Liverpool as a city where my mind was opened to new ways of thinking by a unique course.’ (Recent Graduate).
On this innovative degree we explore the role of literature in society by analysing a wide range of writing from ‘the classics’ to popular fiction, encountering forgotten and contemporary writers as well as ‘the greats’, and examining how readers have been challenged and stimulated in the past and the present.
On a more traditional English course you might concentrate on the works of famous authors such as Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and Plath. You will, of course, encounter all of these on our course, but as part of a study of a wider culture which includes many other exciting texts and authors. We are interested in the question of what it means to be human: Why do we have the ideas we have? How have these changed through different historical periods? What is the relationship between the time we live in and the ways we write or what we choose to read?
In thinking about these questions we look at a variety of written forms from the sonnet to accounts of witchcraft trials; Frankenstein to satirical songs; the nineteenth-century novel to lunatic asylum reports; slave narratives to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon; cookery books to The Wasp Factory. We offer an exciting programme that will introduce you to new ideas and ways of thinking, that will broaden your horizons intellectually and personally, and will enrich your cultural consciousness. All staff are engaged in research and publication in literature and cultural history and we were awarded a rating of ‘national excellence’ in the last Research Assessment Exercise. Our research feeds directly into our teaching, which is informed by the most recent scholarship.
We aim to create a friendly and stimulating environment in which every student is encouraged to develop his or her academic abilities and potential as fully as possible. We are committed to fostering students’ full participation, both intellectually and personally, in the concerns and activities of the subject area. Teaching takes the form of lectures and seminar-workshops with an emphasis on group discussion. All students have a personal tutor.
Tags: cultural history, interactive level, new ways, research assessment, s song, slave narratives, song of solomon, sonnet, studying english, toni morrison, wasp factory, witchcraft trials