English and Journalism - BA (Hons)

This module examines different forms of writing that engage critically and creatively with key issues connected to ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’ environments. Each week, we will study a different literary text, period and genre informed by appropriate theories and scholarship. We will consider how writing constructs, examines and challenges ideas about nature, life in cities, technology, and animals, and in doing so engages in debates about equality, sustainability, identity and otherness. Through a chronological approach to texts from the eighteenth century to the present day, these topics will be explored in a variety of historical, social, political, and aesthetic contexts. This module will enhance your understanding of reading and writing as practices through which we develop knowledge about the world, and the place of people within it. It will prompt you to consider the importance of the environment and sustainability in relation to employability skills and future careers.

This module is designed to help you to develop an understanding of the concept of freedom of expression, and how it is balanced by the legal, regulatory and ethical constraints on news reporting and the media in general. The module is key in developing your awareness, knowledge and skills concerning media law, enabling you to protect yourself, your employers, and subjects of your work. The module approaches law and ethics from a practicing journalist’s perspective rather than that of a legal professional.

Practical reporting will explore the ways in which you will be able to take a story from concept through to publication and output. This module is unique as it offers a simulated newsroom approach, where you will work to regular deadlines. The module will introduce you to the challenges faced by journalists in newsrooms up and down the country each day. You will work to live briefs and on specific reporting tasks designed to allow you to enhance a variety of skills such as sourcing news, identifying interviewees and researching background material to support your content.

The purpose of this module is to enable you to develop professional attributes and subject skills through experience in the work place, and to critically reflect upon your learning in that context. You will normally be expected to arrange your own placement, with support from academic staff and ADM Careers+.

The module is an opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills of collaboration by enabling you to create an interdisciplinary project with students from complementary disciplines, or with academic staff. Collaboration is a vital employability skill within the Creative Industries and this module allows you to develop these skills, making use of University facilities and with the support of academic staff. Within this module framework, several kinds of collaborative opportunities are available. For example, with the approval of your supervisor, you can determine a project based on your own interests; your supervisor may set you a predetermined project to enable you to work with other students in a way that is appropriate to your subject area; or there may be opportunities for you to collaborate with staff on research projects. In all cases, you must apply your subject skills to an interdisciplinary project which will be agreed in advance with your supervisor.

This module provides an opportunity for you to apply your knowledge and skills to an external, professional brief. The brief will be set by or in discussion with an external client/agency/community and could be a ‘real life’ problem to be solved, or a simulation. It is an opportunity for you to engage in a responsive, imaginative and professional manner with an aspect of your subject area, which contributes to the development of employability skills within the supportive infrastructure of the University.

This module introduces you to some of the principal works of one of the most dynamic and exhilarating periods in English literature, the cultural legacy of which has influenced the creative arts and the history of ideas ever since. The texts studied on this module raise profound and lasting questions, and you should approach them in a spirit of adventure and enquiry. Can literature act as an agent of revolution? What is the creative imagination? What is liberty? How should we conceive of the natural world? What is the significance of feeling and empathy? What is the relationship between language, society and authority? What do we mean by ‘Romanticism’? Of what is humankind capable? As such, the module also requires you to think about the relationship between literature and history, and how literary texts in any era respond both to the present and the past. Authors and their works are examined in their social, political and economic context, as well as the intellectual, religious and spiritual traditions in which they participate.

This module will deepen your knowledge and understanding of the core foundations of the English language and allow you to research intellectually challenging concepts using a variety of methodological approaches. You will focus on the description of English grammar, morphology, syntax and style as well as analyse linguistics phenomena in context. You will develop your analytical skills and capacity to be reflective and critical when synthesising complex information. The module will build your linguistic skills and thus promote graduate employability.

In this module, you will explore key elements of writing short stories and the distinctive ways they are used. You will discover themes, ideas, and approaches that are appropriate for use within a shorter form, and learn techniques used to create and control style and effect in this context. You will develop your skills learnt in year one, such as showing and telling, the use of detail and description, imagery, viewpoint and narrative structure. Your reading will take in both collections of short stories by a single writer and individual stories by a wider range of contemporary and classic writers. You will examine each element of style in a given short story and then expand and experiment with what you have learned in your own writing. You will write flash fiction and micro fiction as well as more traditional length short stories.

This module offers a survey of key 20th and 21st century texts and movements in western theatre. You will engage with the artistic movements that developed in Europe from the early 20th century and identify key playwrights and practitioners that brought significant changes to the stage, both on the continent and in Britain. Through studying a range of plays from this period, both as written texts and in performance, you will consider the ways in which innovations in the early 20th century continue to influence theatre writing and practice today.

This module covers the poetry and prose of the Victorian period, through which you will learn about the formal properties and trends of literature of the period and the innovations which arose, as well as the historical context including social change, gender roles and religion. You will be encouraged to read widely, and to look backwards and forwards through literary history to enable you to situate the literature of the period in context. There will be a strong emphasis on the close reading of texts and on the importance of research and reading relevant works of criticism; you will be encouraged to develop your research and writing skills and to work independently, which will support your work across this and other modules. We'll also think about Victorian culture and how this remains an important determining factor within modern society.

This module will introduce you the study of language and society and outline how language can vary based on a range of social factors. Over the course of the module, students will explore key concepts and terminology, as well as a range of topics such as language variation and change, language and social class, language and gender, language and race/ethnicity, language contact and bilingualism, language and education, language and the media, research methods in sociolinguistics, the role of language in wider contemporary society, and how sociolinguistic research can be utilised in non- academic contexts.

This module will teach you the essential skills of, and principles behind, the writing of films. While we will focus on short films, many of the principles we learn apply to screenwriting for film and television more generally. You will study a number of freely available short guides to screenplay layout and formatting and be trained in the practical application of screenplay formatting software. You will write several short scripts, given as fortnightly writing exercises, and receive detailed formative feedback on one of the scripts, which you can use to improve and develop your work for your final portfolio. You will focus on visual storytelling, layout conventions, and the issue of writing to scale (budget). You will also be encouraged to analyse, but also critique, dramatic construction in terms of character function, motivation and genre.

This module explores two concepts central to our understanding of what makes us ‘modern’: gender and sexuality. We will challenge ‘common sense’ understandings of gender and sexuality by interrogating cultural identities, such as queer, heterosexual, homosexual, gay, lesbian, straight and trans. It will introduce you to gender studies and sexuality studies as theoretical, social, cultural, political and historical fields of investigation. 

‘Multicultural Literature’ focuses on the history of British multiculturalism in literature from the 1950s up to the present day. Exploring a range of British Caribbean, Asian, African, and other multicultural writing, we explore powerful stories of new beginnings, the search for belonging, diverse identities, and complex communities. You will develop a critical awareness of how writers deal with questions of race and nationhood, colonial discourse, cultural hybridity, migration and asylum. The module develops your aesthetic, critical, and historical awareness that will inform your independent thinking about contemporary multiculturalism. It spans a diverse set of literary texts (novels, short prose, poems) produced primarily by ‘minority’ writers in Britain since the post-war era (Caribbean, Asian, African and other less established immigrant groups). You will study these texts alongside relevant histories of migration, theories of representation, and critical debates about multiculturalism.

This module is designed to provide you with the opportunity to undertake a credit bearing, 40- week Professional Placement as an integral part of your Undergraduate Degree. The purpose of the Professional Placement is to improve your employability skills which will, through the placement experience, allow you to evidence your professional skills, attitudes and behaviours at the point of entry to the postgraduate job market.  Furthermore, by completing the Professional Placement, you will be able to develop and enhance your understanding of the professional work environment, relevant to your chosen field of study, and reflect critically on your own professional skills development within the workplace. 

Knowledge of advanced reporting techniques has become increasingly important for both journalists and publishers as the journalism industry changes in response to widespread access to information and a more competitive publishing environment. This module will equip you with the advanced techniques to find exclusive stories and to ethically and accurately report those for an identified audience within professional contexts.

The ‘Major Project Preparation’ module focuses on creative thinking and initial research to develop a proposal and plan for the delivery of your Major Project. You will be introduced to the skills, techniques and processes required to identify, articulate, and organise a project that can be successfully realised. It aims to ensure that you judge the appropriateness of a variety of critical and analytical approaches to developing a major project and that you create a plan that is within scope and can be delivered successfully to a high standard.

In this module you will develop a plan for the delivery of your Major Project. You will build further on project management skills, techniques and processes introduced elsewhere on your course, enabling you to bring together a project plan that can be successfully realised. You will synthesise your existing knowledge of your subject specialism and formulate your own approach to addressing a specific problem, question or topic. The module will look at how to evaluate the usefulness of primary and secondary source material in relation to your project and ensure you consider ethical issues in your project plan design. The module aims to ensure that you judge the appropriateness of a variety of critical and analytical approaches to developing a major project and ensure that you create a plan that is within scope and can be delivered successfully to a high standard.

The Major Project: Dissertation module is where you will put into practice the creative thinking, initial research, proposal, and plan developed in the Major Project Preparation module and wherein you will undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed research project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you and which represents the culmination of your studies.

The Major Project - Production module is where you will put into practice the creative thinking, initial research, proposal, and plan developed in the Major Project Preparation module and wherein you will undertake a sustained, in-depth production media project exploring an area that is related to an area of personal interest to you and wider audiences. Completion of the Major Project represents the culmination of your studies. You can produce a single media product or portfolio of products either individually or as part of a group.

In this module we focus on modernism – the defining artistic movement of the twentieth century – to analyse a range of literary texts that we hope you will find challenging and rewarding. Together, we explore what literary modernism was but we also consider an active claim: that literary modernism continues to influence post-war and contemporary authors and that, in various ways, it persists well into late twentieth century and twenty-first century literature. We cover central modernist writers who are considered key formal innovators, such as Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence. We then explore how later writers, such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Rhys, Muriel Spark, J. M. Coetzee, and Zadie Smith, handle the legacies of the modernist movement. You will be encouraged to engage closely with issues of form and style in significant modernist and postmodern texts. At the same time, we will situate these texts in their historical contexts, considering key themes and categories such as tradition, colonialism, industrialisation, culture, gender, time, and ethics.

This module will introduce you to the field of Applied Sociolinguistics and how sociolinguistic research can contribute to improving human well-being. You will learn to critically evaluate the role of sociolinguistics in addressing linguistic and social inequalities and how language shapes all aspects of social life. You will work with an external partner and investigate the application of sociolinguistic research to the solution of practical, educational and social problems of all types. You will learn how evidence-led sociolinguistic research can be applied in a variety of settings, including healthcare, law, tourism, the workplace, and other non-academic contexts. The module will develop your skills in leveraging sociolinguistic research to produce demonstrable changes in practice and teach you to how to engage a variety of external stakeholders and end-users in your research. 

This module will enable you to build upon your current reading and writing of poetry, and to develop your range, technique and sophistication as a contemporary poet and thinker on poetry. As well as cultivating your ability to read poetry sympathetically and critically, you will learn how to nurture the poetic imagination and what Ted Hughes called its ‘psychic disciplines’, with a view to strengthening and emboldening the intuition and sensitivity upon which poetic technique depends. You also will acquire practical knowledge of publishing and performing your own work.

This module focuses on literature in the gothic tradition from its inception through to the present day. During the module, the development of the gothic form will be traced from its origins through to recent manifestations of the genre. Gothic literature often reflects social and cultural trends as well as providing a space to manifest cultural anxieties, expressing a society’s suppressed desires and fears in an acceptable literary form. Such texts can therefore be read not only as escapist, but as serious texts which seek to express often radical, socially unacceptable or psychologically-submerged ideas. The module will enable you to identify these undercurrents as well as to explore the major themes and aesthetics of the genre. You will be encouraged to interrogate texts with an eye to these issues, including those of gender, race and class, and to contextualise the texts in order to analyse and understand the changing concept of Gothic.

‘Moral Philosophy’ enables students to explore ethical issues concerning, for example, animal rights, abortion, euthanasia, inequality, and the environment. So doing, it offers the opportunity to practise research, writing, and critical thinking skills in a discipline adjacent to English. Students begin by reviewing a range of key philosophical frameworks from Aristotelian virtue ethics to Kantian duty-based ethics through to contemporary utilitarianism. Core concepts such as personhood and the nature of social contracts provide the basis for a series of applied case studies. The module equips students with practical skills in evaluating the ethics of particular choices, encouraging good citizenship, compassion and an understanding of global issues.

Media Activism is a practice-based research module for students who wish to study media activism, and engage in media activist work in practice within social justice, community media and voluntary sectors. This module will examine the role of media in political campaigns and social movements, with a focus on the role of digital communications. It will draw on a range of interdisciplinary literature from media studies, social movement studies and political theory, and examine case studies of political campaigns and social movements in the UK and globally. The first half of the module will introduce students to broader theoretical and political debates around media activism, while the second half will focus on the application of the principles to real-world examples.

This module will enable you to look towards the future innovations occurring within the fields of digital media. Starting with a history of digital emergence, considering concepts such as remediation, convergence culture, and the post-digital, we will then begin to unearth some of the more experimental and emerging practices, and consider their viability for a digital future. We will ask why some mediums prevail and others pass us by and to question what is really “new” about new media, and how we might escape certain structures and practices that constrict our developments. This module will also engage critically with ideas of utopian and dystopian predictions of the future and engage with concepts such as posthumanism and transhumanism to ask what the long-term impact of digital media usage might mean, from AI to cyborgs and beyond.

This module is for students wishing to further their creativity and provides the opportunity to develop a unique visual style as a photographer in line with appropriate professional practice. You will engage with a variety of creative photographic approaches and explore innovative practice, informing your own photographic style and enabling you to work professionally within specific fields of photography.

Audience and user experience design is the reference point for meeting audience and user needs for most media products. User experience is the understanding of who your audience is, what motivates them, what frustrates them, and how to add value to their lives. User experience enables the designer of experiences and media products to meet their audience’s needs on an emotional level through a creative process called "design thinking" and encourages repeated use. In an increasingly user-focused world, user experience design is an area that transcends its home of digital media design and can be applied to any field that requires an audience and consumer interaction, with many employment and further education opportunities to consider.

This module examines key issues, concepts and debates relating to race, culture and the media, and how the diversity of lived experience is represented in the media. The module takes an intersectional perspective, considering race in relation to gender, sexuality, citizenship, etc. It engages with literature from Media and Cultural Studies, and also draws on Postcolonial Studies, Critical Race Theory and other aspects of Humanities scholarship. A range of media examples will be considered, ranging from film and television to digital media platforms. Students will have the opportunity to explore their own personal and research interests in relation to the module themes, and explore methodological approaches for doing so. Students are encouraged to consider their own positionality and identity as media workers/scholars in relation to the module themes and their own work.

Communication in Action takes a critical look at how organisations operating across a wide variety of sectors use communications techniques to achieve operational goals. It examines the PR strategies and practices they use to enhance their credibility and reputation with a range of stakeholders through effective messaging.