Frequently Asked

Questions

MMU English Department

BA Courses

Q1. What is MMU Department of English like?

Q2. What makes the study of English on the Manchester Campus at MMU distinctive?

Q3. Who should I contact if I want to ask questions about the Department of English and its degree courses?

Q4. What different degrees courses do you offer?

Q5. Can I study English Language within the department?

Q6. How do I get onto one of your degree courses?

Q7. What course units will I take in my first year?

Q8. Can you describe the first year units in more detail?

Q9. What will I study in the second and third years of my course?

Q10. How are the course units taught?

Q11. What kinds of assessments will I have?

Q12. What class contact time can I expect in my first year?

Q13. What will my timetable look like?

Q14. Are there chances for placements, study abroad, project work, learning languages?

Q15. What topics can I choose for my dissertation?

Q16. What will I get out of my English degree at MMU?

Things you might want to know...

Q1. What is MMU Department of English like?

The Department of English, housed in the Geoffrey Manton Building on MMU’s All Saints Campus in the heart of Manchester, is a large and vibrant community of around forty internationally renowned writers and critics. The department is home to the new Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and the Manchester Writing School, the most successful of its kind in the UK, with over forty-five published MA graduates. The Creative Director of the Manchester Writing School is the UK Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

Q2. What makes the study of English on the Manchester Campus at MMU distinctive?

• While giving its students a solid grounding in the traditional core of the subject, our BA English Programme adopts a modern and innovative approach. Our courses place their strongest emphasis on the study of literature, but also include creative writing and the study of film and other media. Our flexible course structure means that students are able to choose course units from a wide range of options, including American Literature, Creative Writing and Film.

• Students have a wealth of opportunities to engage with the many conferences, readings, research programmes, festivals and competitions run by the department, and to build their own networks among our many partners in the dynamic Manchester cultural and creative community. To find out more about what’s happening follow us on Twitter: @mmuenglishdept and like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/mmuenglishdepartment

• We pride ourselves on offering intellectually challenging programmes of study in a friendly and student-centred environment. The performance of our students ranks consistently among the best in the sector with 84% of our students graduating with a First or 2:1 in 2013.

• The size of the department and our flexible course structure means that students on all pathways are able to choose course units from a wide range of options, including Film, American Literature and Creative Writing.

• Our diverse assessment methods

support students in developing

presentation and team-working skills

which are highly valued by employers.

• All of our course pathways offer the opportunity to study abroad for a term.

Q3. Who should I contact if I want to ask questions about the Department of English and its degree courses?

NB: You need to submit your application to UCAS. On the UCAS website, you can track the progress of your application. For general queries about your application to MMU please contact our Central Admissions team at: adm.humanities@mmu.ac.uk

However if you’d like to speak directly to a member of the department who can tell you more about our courses, please email our Admissions Tutor Julie Wilkinson on j.wilkinson@mmu.ac.uk and she’ll put you in touch with someone appropriate who can help.

Q4. What different degree courses do you offer?

In addition to our Single Honours BA English degree, three Joint Honours degree courses are taught entirely within the department:

• English and American Literature

• English and Creative Writing

• English and Film

Q5. Can I study English Language within the department?

Our courses place their strongest emphasis on the study of literature, but the analysis of literary language and cultural discourse is core to our curriculum, and those students who have studied only English Language at A Level do as well with us as those who have studied only English Literature.

Q6. How do I get onto one of your degree courses?

Entry Requirements

For Single Honours English, English and Creative Writing, and English and American Literature 280 points at A2 Level, including B in English Literature, Language or a combination.

For English and Film 280 points at A2 Level, including B in EITHER English Literature, Language or combination OR Film Studies.

Applicants to the English and Creative Writing BA (Hons) also submit a short portfolio of written creative work.

Q7. What course units will I take in my first year?

In the first year on our single and joint honours courses, students currently take the following unit combinations. If we make changes to these unit combinations to improve our courses this booklet will be updated.

English• Critical Dialogues •Approaches to Poetry •Approaches to Drama •Approaches to Narrative

English and Creative Writing•Critical Dialogues•Approaches to Poetry•Approaches to Drama•Writing Practice

English and American Literature •Critical Dialogues•Approaches to Poetry•Approaches to Drama•Approaches to American Literature

English and Film•Critical Dialogues•Approaches to Narrative•Histories of Cinema •Questions of Cinema

Q8. Can you describe the first year units in more detail?

Approaches to American Literature This unit introduces a range of texts to demonstrate how a national literary tradition has evolved in the United States. It offers an historical introduction to American literature and culture, from early European imaginings to encounters with Native Americans, Puritanism, individualism, the frontier, the American South and the Civil War. Major events of the 20th and 21st centuries are also introduced: WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, Vietnam

and 9-11. Texts include: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Plath’s The Bell Jar, Doctorow’s Ragtime, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.

Approaches to Drama This unit introduces the practice of reading drama in various forms: on the page and stage, and on cinematic and television screens. It surveys the history of drama from the Greeks to the present day, focussing on a series of key dramatic texts.

Selected texts: Euripides’ Medea, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Aphra Behn’s The Rover, Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Brecht’s Mother Courage, Beckett’s Endgame, Tony Warren’s Coronation Street and Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9.

Approaches to Narrative This unit introduces the critical study of narrative, providing you with the appropriate critical skills and vocabulary with which to analyse different forms of prose narrative, introducing a range of texts from different historical periods, traditions and genres. It develops key skills in the areas of planning and writing essays, and supports structured reflection on the transition to university-level English studies. Texts studied include: Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Brontës’ Jane Eyre, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Dickens’ Great Expectations, Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Hari Kunzru’s Transmission.

Approaches to Poetry The unit introduces the basics of studying poetry, and offers an historical survey of English poetry since the 16th Century. Poems studied range from 1550 to the contemporary, including: Donne’s ‘The Sun Rising’, Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’, Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, Keats’, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, Browning’s, ‘My Last Duchess’, Eliot’s, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, and ‘The Waste Land’, Larkin’s, ‘An Arundel Tomb’,

Plath’s ‘Daddy’.

Critical Dialogues This unit introduces a number of topics in critical / cultural theory and a range of approaches to the analysis of literary and cinematic texts. It provides the skills required to identify, explain and compare particular critical and theoretical arguments. It develops key skills in planning and researching essays at degree level.

Texts include: The Norton Anthology of

Theory and Criticism, Shelley’s Frankenstein,

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case

of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Henry James’

The Turn of the Screw.

Histories of Cinema This unit introduces a range of films in their historical context. It examines their style and considers how they represent aspects of social life: ethnicity, gender, sexuality, race and social class, for example. Films covered include: Metropolis, Strike, Regle du Jeu, Rome Open City, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Aguirre Wrath of God, Fear Eats the Soul, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Questions of Cinema This unit explores the language of film studies, teaching vital film-reading skills that must be mastered to undertake the Film and English BA. It focuses on the ways film texts generate meaning and how we can decode those meanings by paying attention to the interaction of film form, content and context. It focuses on a number of areas, including mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, soundtrack, narrative,

film stock and acting. Writing Practice A workshop course, introducing key skills in creative writing in prose, drama and poetry. It develops each writer’s inventive range and formal fluency. You will identify and practise key fundamental skills of literary and dramatic construction and expression, such as using rhythm and voice in poetry, constructing character, fictional plot and dramatic action and representing setting across a range of forms. We will use a variety of set texts selected to support investigation of contemporary literary and dramatic forms.

Q9. What will I study in the second and third years of my course?

In the second year students currently take two core units and choose two further options. In the third year only the dissertation is core, students then choose three further options (SEE TABLE OPPOSITE).

Q10. How are the course units taught?

We teach through a regular mixture of large-group lectures, where we’ll present information to you, smaller seminar groups, which are much more interactive, and one-to-one tutorials. All of our course units are supported by online resources so that you can carry on studying away from the classroom.

Core Units (2nd Year) Option Units (2nd Year)

ENGLISH

Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism, Postwar to Present.

American Literature C19th to Modernism, American Spaces, Creative Writing Workshop, Critical and Cultural Theory 1, Enlightenment to Romanticism, Film Genre and Mode, Theorising the Screen, Creative Writing Workshop (this unit is a pre-requisite for a level six Creative Writing Dissertation), A History of Text Transmission, or English in Practice (and foreign language).

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

American Literature C19th to Modernism, American Spaces.

Critical and Cultural Theory 1, Enlightenment and Romanticism, Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism, Postwar to the Present, Film Genre and Mode, History of Text Transmission, Theorising the Screen, Creative Writing Workshop (this unit is a pre-requisite for a level six Creative Writing Dissertation), or English in Practice (and foreign language).

ENGLISH AND CREATIVE WRITING

Creative Writing Workshop, History of Text Transmission.

American Literature C19th to Modernism, American Spaces, Enlightenment and Romanticism, Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism, Postwar to the Present, Critical and Cultural Theory 1, Film Genre and Mode, Theorising the Screen, or English in Practice (and foreign language).

ENGLISH AND FILM

Film Genre and Mode, Theorising the Screen.

American Literature C19th to Modernism, American Spaces, Enlightenment and Romanticism, History of Text Transmission, Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism, Postwar to the Present, Critical and Cultural Theory 1, Creative Writing Workshop (this unit is a pre-requisite for a level six Creative Writing Dissertation), or English in Practice (and foreign language).

Third year option unitsAll students do a dissertation in their third year. This will be a critical dissertation for students on the English, English and American Literature and English and Film course pathways, and an extended piece of creative work for students on the English and Creative Writing pathway. You will then choose three further units from the following options:

•American Literature 1945-present •American Spaces •Cinema and Nation •Cinesexualities•Creative Writing Dissertation•Critical and Cultural Theory II•Critical Dissertation•Drama in Practice•Fin-de-Siecle Literature & Culture•Independent Study

•Life Stories•Modern Gothic •Reading and Writing Children’s

Literature •Reading and Writing Crime Fiction •Reading and Writing Poetry•Representing Trauma •Shakespeare •Texting the World: Literature and

Globalisation •20th Century British, Irish & American

Drama

Core Units (2nd Year) Option Units (2nd Year)

ENGLISH

Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism, Postwar to Present.

American Literature C19th to Modernism, American Spaces, Creative Writing Workshop, Critical and Cultural Theory 1, Enlightenment to Romanticism, Film Genre and Mode, Theorising the Screen, Creative Writing Workshop (this unit is a pre-requisite for a level six Creative Writing Dissertation), A History of Text Transmission, or English in Practice (and foreign language).

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

American Literature C19th to Modernism, American Spaces.

Critical and Cultural Theory 1, Enlightenment and Romanticism, Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism, Postwar to the Present, Film Genre and Mode, History of Text Transmission, Theorising the Screen, Creative Writing Workshop (this unit is a pre-requisite for a level six Creative Writing Dissertation), or English in Practice (and foreign language).

ENGLISH AND CREATIVE WRITING

Creative Writing Workshop, History of Text Transmission.

American Literature C19th to Modernism, American Spaces, Enlightenment and Romanticism, Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism, Postwar to the Present, Critical and Cultural Theory 1, Film Genre and Mode, Theorising the Screen, or English in Practice (and foreign language).

ENGLISH AND FILM

Film Genre and Mode, Theorising the Screen.

American Literature C19th to Modernism, American Spaces, Enlightenment and Romanticism, History of Text Transmission, Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism, Postwar to the Present, Critical and Cultural Theory 1, Creative Writing Workshop (this unit is a pre-requisite for a level six Creative Writing Dissertation), or English in Practice (and foreign language).

Third year option unitsAll students do a dissertation in their third year. This will be a critical dissertation for students on the English, English and American Literature and English and Film course pathways, and an extended piece of creative work for students on the English and Creative Writing pathway. You will then choose three further units from the following options:

•American Literature 1945-present •American Spaces •Cinema and Nation •Cinesexualities•Creative Writing Dissertation•Critical and Cultural Theory II•Critical Dissertation•Drama in Practice•Fin-de-Siecle Literature & Culture•Independent Study

•Life Stories•Modern Gothic •Reading and Writing Children’s

Literature •Reading and Writing Crime Fiction •Reading and Writing Poetry•Representing Trauma •Shakespeare •Texting the World: Literature and

Globalisation •20th Century British, Irish & American

Drama

Q11. What kinds of assessments will I have?

You’ll be assessed in a variety of ways: traditional essays, presentations, blogs, creative portfolios, exams, etc.

Q12. What class contact time can I expect in my first year?

You will take FOUR of the units mentioned previously (depending on which degree course you are on). Each of these runs on a different day, so you can expect to be in class on FOUR days a week. On average each unit has 2 hrs of timetabled lecture/seminar/workshop time per week (meaning that in total you will be in some kind of group study for 8 hours a week). Allocated slots for 1-to-1 tutorials etc are attached to the scheduled times for each class for students who wish to speak to their tutors individually etc. This is the big shift from 6th Form (A2) work: the emphasis at university is on your management of your working week, though we are here to help and guide you.

Q13. What will my timetable look like?

1st Year: Both Terms The grid opposite shows all the units on our Single Honours (ENG) and 3 Joint Honours Degrees (English and Film Studies (EF) / American Literature (AL) / Creative Writing (CW)). Students on the MMU Combined Honours degree also take ‘Critical Dialogues’ and ‘Approaches to Narrative’ if they choose ‘English’ as one of their subjects. The grid is an example based on our current timetable for 2013 (it’s always possible that the slots for units will change year by year). Where units are repeated on the timetable you will be in either the morning or the afternoon slot (it is sometimes possible for

students to select which they prefer, subject to room and class sizes).

1st Year UnitsFor example, if you are a Single Honours English student your timetable could look like the grid opposite.

You take ‘Critical Dialogues’, ‘Approaches to Poetry’, ‘Approaches to Drama’ and ‘Approaches to Narrative’ (so you are not timetabled on Wednesdays).

If, on the other hand, you are on our English and Film Studies degree, you take ‘Critical Dialogues’, ‘Approaches to Narrative’, ‘Questions of Cinema’, and ‘Histories of Cinema’ (so you have no classes on Thursdays).

Q14. Are there chances for placements, study abroad, project work, learning languages?

All are possible. Some students choose study for a term or a year abroad (Europe, USA or Australia) in their 2nd Year. Language courses may be taken as ‘extras’ or as part of your degree. Through our innovative ‘English in Practice’ unit, 2nd Year students may consider the application of their studies to the outside world - this might lead to placements (eg, in schools), to work with festivals or events run by our Writing School, to film programming etc. Students may also act as ‘Ambassadors’ on a range of exciting projects. There are many opportunities for voluntary work: where possible, this can form part of the assessed degree in both the 2nd and 3rd year of study.

am pm

Monday Critical Dialogues (all students) Critical Dialogues (all students)

Tuesday Approaches to Poetry (ENG, AL, CW)

Approaches to Poetry (ENG, AL, CW)

Questions of Cinema (EF)

Wednesday Writing Practice (CW) Histories of Cinema (EF)

Thursday Approaches to Drama (ENG, AL, CW)

Approaches to Drama (ENG, AL, CW)

Friday Approaches to Narrative (ENG, EF). Approaches to American Literature (AL)

Approaches to Narrative (ENG, EF, CW)

Q15. What topics can I choose for my dissertation?This is just a brief snapshot of some of the diverse topics students have picked to explore in the recent past. Usually you will begin to work out what areas of study you are most curious about during your 2nd Year (there are ‘research’ based units such as

English in Practice which help you to find topics and plan projects). In principle, a dissertation can be on anything as long as it is relevant to your degree. You will discuss your project in advance with us, and we help you shape it into a meaningful topic, which explores something new and important. For most students, the dissertation is one of the academic highlights.

2013

am pm

Monday Critical Dialogues

Tuesday Approaches to Poetry

Wednesday

Thursday Approaches to Drama

Friday Approaches to Narrative

Example of a Single Honours English 1st Year timetable

Critical Dissertations • The Idea of Predestination in Paradise

Lost.

• A critical interpretation of Manfred in relation to the poet Lord Byron and his incestuous and homosexual affairs.

• Discovering the Romantic strains within Literature of the Beat Generation.

• Women Romantic Poets in the Eighteenth Century.

• Satanic Readings of Paradise Lost.

• Representation of ‘Southern Freaks’ in Cormac McCarthy’s novels.

• Religion, Oppression and Femininity in Black Narcissus, Carrie and Sister Act.

• Zombie Films and consumerism.

• The Christ-Artist: Nick Cave and the Power of the Creative Imagination.

• Re-telling Beauty and the Beast.

• ‘Deconstructing Kurt Vonnegut or Kurt Vonnegut Deconstructs’.

• Queering Underground and Avant-garde Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.

• The City, Postmodernism and Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner.

• Love and the Supernatural in 19th Century Gothic Fiction.

• The representation of disabled soldiers in film and literature.

• Women, Food and the Body.

Creative Projects

• ‘Til Death Do Us Party’ (a screenplay described by one examiner as “a cross generic, self reflexively anarchic take on contemporary cinema – taking in zombie movies, fantasy quest epics, psycho thrillers and even, at times, the buddy Western”).

• ‘Getting the Bird’ (a screenplay in which comedy is found in the banality of young men’s lives).

• ‘Annabelle’ (a collection of poems bringing together the critical work of Laub and Caruth with poetic influences of Edson and Larkin).

• ‘Erasmus: Before, There and After’ (a collection of poems based on the experience of living in the South of France for a year, and drawing on the influence and techniques of French symbolist poets Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine).

• ‘Someone Else’s Dream’ (a short story dealing with themes of ambition, thwarted ambition and the consequences of success and failure).

• ‘Facial Recognition’ (a short story based on research into Salvador Dali’s ‘paranoiac-critical method’).

• ‘Getting a Grip’ (a short story fictionalising an experience with Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome).

• ‘Heather House’ (a collection of three stories together spanning a century, making use of postmodern approaches to writing).

Q16. What will I get out of my English degree at MMU?

We hope you’ll have a wonderful time and that we’ll instil in you a lifelong love of literature. But we also have plans for you beyond your graduation!

Employers know that English graduates with good degrees will have advanced skills in written and oral communication, in thinking critically and independently and in building a well-structured, thoroughly researched and persuasive argument. This is why English graduates have long been in demand for a wide range of professions, from media and communications to law. Statistics published this year show that graduates from our BA English Programme are some of the most employable in the University. 94% of English graduates from the class of 2012 were in

work or further study when surveyed by a government agency in January 2013. This figure puts us well ahead of the sector average for English. University research shows a strong correlation between good degree outcomes and high levels of graduate employment, and we believe that it’s no accident that 82% of this very successful generation of English graduates achieved first or 2:1 degrees - a figure which is around 20% higher than that of many comparable English BA Programmes. But a good degree is not the whole story in explaining graduate success. A good degree may well get you onto a shortlist, but it will almost certainly be the skills and confidence that you pick up along the way that get you the job.

It’s because of this that we make the building of personal confidence in our students one of our priorities when we’re deciding how to teach and assess our courses. We’re all aware that giving presentations and working on group projects often take students beyond their comfort zones. We try to minimise the sense of ‘risk’ involved in these exercises, so they’ll often be formative rather than summative assessments, or carry a small percentage of overall marks. We believe that encouraging students to take an active role in the classroom is a powerful way to build their confidence and to make them highly employable when they graduate.

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