What will I learn?

Overview

Our joint honours course allows students to pursue their own areas of interest within English Literature and Philosophy whilst also providing them with a solid foundation in the discipline and a range of personal and professional skills which will serve as a springboard for their future career development. The programme is carefully designed to enable students to gradually develop their knowledge and skills and to become autonomous, effective and independent learners.

English Literature offers students the opportunity to study British and world literatures through a model of progressive specialisation that teaches advanced literary critical skills in the context of periodised, thematised, formal and theoretical modules. In Philosophy, our modules explore how the work of historical philosophers impacts upon debates that are central to contemporary philosophy.

Learning and assessment

In your first year, you’ll build the core skills and understanding you need for undergraduate literary studies through modules on critical theory and global literatures. You’ll be introduced to Reason and what makes an action ‘good’ or ‘bad’. You’ll ask how humans are different from animals and you’ll learn how to evaluate arguments and use logic.

In your second year, you’ll broaden and deepen your knowledge of literature in relation to movements and cultures past and present. You’ll start to focus on your philosophical interests. This might be religion and the concept of gods; or evolution, gender, identity or art.

In your final year, you’ll have the freedom to focus on what you care about most, including your dissertation subject. You can explore literary topics like urbanisation, utopian societies, artificial intelligence, sustainability or even witchcraft. You’ll look more deeply at the concepts of freedom, morality and judgment. You might question whether we have free will. Or you might test the idea of evil.