English with Creative Writing BA

Compulsory

• Fiction 1: Introduction to Writing Fiction

  This module is designed to introduce students to the core elements and skills necessary for writing fiction. Aided by close reading and discussion of fiction by published writers, students will develop knowledge and understanding of core elements of the craft, such

  as character, setting, plot, dialogue, as well as key skills such as understanding audience, showing rather than telling, and writing to a specified word-count and brief. Students will practice these core competencies and also learn how to workshop their prose, developing skills for the giving and receiving of constructive feedback to enable redrafting of works-in-progress. Students will reflect upon their inspirations, reading and the development of their craft.

• The Reader’s Toolkit

  This module focuses on the key skills of critical and close reading, as central to the study of literature. Learning the skills necessary to read at a higher level, including the interpretation and analysis of literary texts, is a core competency for students of English literature. The central aim of this module, therefore, is to enhance and develop students’ engagement with primary and secondary texts. Students will learn how to analyse and interpret complex texts in various genres, making use of the established techniques and approaches of the discipline. Students will engage with the idea of critical reading as a practice-based and culturally-informed act that must be learned and developed. Teaching is shaped around the goal of developing students’ “reading resilience”, that is, the ability to read, discuss, and write about, varied and challenging texts with confidence. Through discussion, group workshops, lectures and individual tasks, students will become proficient in working with literary and rhetorical texts, learning skills that are essential throughout the degree. The module forms a foundational aspect of the degree programme, benchmarking skills such as time management, evidence-based analysis, and close reading.

• The Writer's Toolkit

  The purpose of this module is to enable Creative Writing and English Literature students to develop a grounding in effective writing practices and core competencies of textual production. Students will develop an understanding of the different stages of textual production, from prewriting, research, planning and outlining, to drafting, feedback and editing, polishing and submission, as well as an understanding of core writing mechanics. This module will enable students to explore and practice the differing conventions of textual production in a variety of areas of academia and the creative industries, from non-fiction modes such as the academic essay, critical and reflective writing, to screenplays and fiction manuscripts.

• Poetry 1: Introduction to Writing Poetry

  This module is designed to introduce students to the core elements and skills necessary for writing poetry. Aided by close reading and discussion of poetry by published writers, students will develop knowledge and understanding of core elements of the craft, such as the poetic line, working in form and free verse, sound and voice, as well as key skills such as concision and redrafting. Students will practice these core competencies and also learn how to workshop poems, developing skills for the giving and receiving of constructive feedback to enable redrafting of works-in-progress. Students will reflect upon their inspirations, reading and the development of their craft.

Optional

• World Literature

  This module aims to introduce students to the study of World Literature, introducing key critical approaches and engaging with texts from contrasting cultural locations. Students will learn about rich and varied world literary traditions and forms; acquire theoretical perspectives; build a world literary critical vocabulary; engage in debates about the meaning and role of world literature and reflect on creative practice and literary production in world contexts.

• Literary London

  This module aims to introduce students to the study of the literature of London, introducing key critical approaches and engaging with texts from a range of cultural backgrounds. Students will learn about London’s rich and varied literary traditions and forms; acquire theoretical perspectives; build a literary critical vocabulary; engage in debates about the meaning and role of London in literature and reflect on creative practice and literary production in relation to London’s diverse past and present.

• Creative Journaling

  This module will introduce you to the practice of creative journaling. You will explore the different ways this practice can support your personal and professional development as creatives. You will critically analyze the creative journals of writers, musicians, and artists, and keep a weekly creative journal, experimenting with different approaches and techniques for documenting and reflecting on their creativity.

• Representation and Identity

  It’s important in the film and television industry to consider whose stories are being told, who is in creative roles behind the camera and how people are being represented. This module will explore identity politics and consider theory such as feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism and disability studies, among others. We will consider how certain identities are portrayed onscreen both historically and now.

• Ways of Hearing 1

  1. Developing a reflective mind and ways to think and discuss music

  2. Learning to write about it with knowledge and critical depth

  3. Understanding how music is made; its forms and structures

  4. Experiencing music from a diverse range of musical genres

  5. Comparisons of approaches across a range of styles and genres from Gregorian chant to Aphex Twin

  6. Developing a clear and appropriate vocabulary for critical discussion and writing

  7. Understanding the function of the music and its context in society

Optional

• Genre Fiction

  This module examines the shifting status of genre fiction in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries by exploring a range of genres (Detective, Gothic, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and crossovers between these). Besides gaining an understanding of some of the key thematic and formal conventions of these genres, and how these have changed over time and with respect to shifting social and political contexts, you will gain an understanding of the critical public sphere that exists beyond academic institutions. Beyond academia, there is a world of reviews, blogs, conventions, and festivals relating to books. Therefore, while this module will cover the academic study of genre fiction and require you to write a conventionally structured and referenced academic essay, it will also branch out to consider this wider context by looking at some reviews and debates from the public sphere and require you to write a review of your own.

• Literatures of Inequality: Global Fictions

  This module looks at a range of twenty-first century fiction originating from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, to explore diverse experiences of inequality in an era of globalisation. It interrogates a range of novels, stories, and poetry in light of theoretical concepts drawn from world-literary theory and materialist feminism, asking whether and how socially committed fiction can challenge the overlapping oppressions of contemporary times.

• The Novel: The Nineteenth Century

  The purpose of this module is to study the interrelation of genre – the novel – and period – the nineteenth century. Through the chronological study of a representative selection of five texts, the module will introduce the key generic elements of the nineteenth-century novel, and chart changes in their deployment over the course of the century. Particular attention will be paid to Realism and Gothic. In addition to narrative form, a range of social and cultural contexts will be suggested as a means of accounting for, and understanding, textual features. Stress will be placed throughout on close textual analysis.

• Literary Movements: Modernism

  In this module we study the literature of the early twentieth century with particular emphasis on those authors who attempted to break away from received norms of literary style and content. As well as providing an overview of the defining textual features of modernism, the module is concerned with the interrelation of text and context, seeing modernist literature as both of, and self-consciously ahead of, its historical moment. We will take into account transnational and cross-cultural contexts, including discussions of the decline of empire, World War I, trauma, the expatriate experience, the legacies of slavery, changing attitudes to feminism, sexuality, class, and shifting constructions of identity.

• Literature and Revolution: Romanticism

  The political events of the late eighteenth century – the American War of Independence, French Revolution, and Napoleonic wars – dramatically changed the lives, ideas, and aesthetics of the Romantic Britain. Evolving from the mid 1770s to the mid 1820s, the period we now call Romanticism signalled a profound change in the form and content of literature, breaking away from the neo-classical conventions of the Augustans which had dominated much of the eighteenth century, and turning to the regional, folkloric, and numinous traditions of British and European literatures. Working in a range of genres, including the novel, pamphlets, poetry, and philosophical, satirical, and travel writing, Romantic writers responded to a set of urgent, ethical, aesthetic, and environmental changes. In the module we consider the ‘first generation’ (Wordsworth, Coleridge, William Blake) and ‘second generation’ Romantics (Shelley, Byron, and Keats), and important political writers such as Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Godwin. Alongside these now-canonical names we read a diverse range of women and Black writers who contributed just as significantly to key Romantic debates: Anna Aikin, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Ottobah Cugoano, Ouladah Equiano, Hannah More, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Robinson, Ignatius Sancho, Mary Shelley, Helen Maria Williams, Dorothy Wordsworth, Phillis Wheatley, and Anne Yearsley.

• Texts and Afterlives: Shakespeare

  The aims of this module are:

  • To introduce the study of Shakespeare at an advanced level, in greater depth, with an emphasis upon the types of study skills required for advanced critical work in the fields of ‘book history’ and ‘performance studies’
  • To introduce and define both ‘book history’ and ‘performance studies’
  • To introduce advanced methods of analysis of early modern texts, both in their original context and in their subsequent manifestations in print
  • To introduce textual scholarship about language, performance and the visual layout of text – both in Shakespeare’s time and in the present day
  • The course will enable students to gain an understanding and experience of the concept of the Shakespearean text as an artefact and art form, one constantly evolving through criticism, editorial intervention and performance
• Contemporary Fiction: Britain and Ireland

  This module introduces students to a range of contemporary British and Irish fiction, developing knowledge of the variety and complexity of contemporary writing and its relation to social and cultural context. The module examines texts which employ a range of themes, forms, and styles. It asks what we mean by the term ‘contemporary’ and encourages analysis of the relationship between texts and the historical moments in which they are produced and consumed.

• Postcolonial Writing

  Postcolonial writing often comes out of difficult circumstances. Writers studied on this module sometimes risked everything to publish what they needed to say. These are the new pioneers of Literature in English whose works would inspire and define the writings of the future. A central focus of the module is to get to grips with the key concepts encountered in postcolonial studies, which have been developed to investigate the phenomena of colonialism and resistance, multiculturalism and globalization, racism, and Islamophobia. Using these, we will be exploring the works of a series of important and fascinating writers. The texts which we will be studying show a variety of different perspectives on colonialism and its legacies, including those of imperialists and the peoples they tried to suppress.

• Fiction II: Writing the Short Story

  The short story is one of the most powerful and satisfying forms of writing to produce. This module focusses on writing and understanding intricate masterpieces in the short story form. We read a wide variety of powerful short stories together—by writers from across the globe, from the mundane and the moving to the strange and experimental— looking closely to help understand what techniques make them so effective, and how we can develop individual approaches to writing our own original stories in response. The exact structure changes each year, but some of the topics covered previously included: subverting and updating traditional fairy-tales; stories with unusual approaches to time; Weird Tales of the impossible and unexplainable; flash fiction; climate change fiction.

• Poetry II: Writing Contemporary Poetry

  This module is designed to build upon foundational skills and knowledge acquired on the first-year poetry module. You will continue to write in increasingly exciting new ways to

  liberate the poet within. You will also expand your awareness of work that is being produced in the current world of UK poetry, the manner in which new mediums and technologies are being employed, and the manner in which this work might challenge previous conceptualisations and traditions in the field. In conclusion, you will acquire crafting tips while trying out traditional and innovate ways to write. There is no expectation of a house style. Your own approach to poetry based on what you will have learned is all that is required. Be excited by your own work, and I (Daljit) will be excited in turn to read it.

• Screenwriting

  The module introduces students to the professional practice and theory of screenwriting for film and television. Although the short film is the main focus of study, the classic, feature length narrative fiction film, television drama, and films from alternative and non- narrative traditions will also be considered. The module is substantially practice-based. All students will write an original screenplay to a maximum length of 10 pages. Students will also produce supporting documents, such as a Story Proposal, Beat Sheet, and Scene Outlines. The module also requires students to analyse films and scripts – including their own and contemporaries’ – from a screenwriting perspective. Students will produce analyses of key features of films and screenplays and write the screenplay for a short film.

• Writing Genre: Horror, Sci-fi and Fantasy

  This module focusses on three popular and enduring genres—horror, science fiction, and fantasy— which provide endless fascination for readers and practitioners alike. We will explore these genres via lectures, seminars (including writing workshops) and the study of classic and emerging writers from each genre. At the end, you will have written a body of work in each genre, with a core understanding of their key features. The module has featured discussion of writers such as Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, Angela Carter, Gwyneth Jones, William Gibson, Octavia Butler, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Brandon Sanderson, and more. Sub-genres and styles discussed include space opera, Grimdark, urban fantasy, utopian/dystopian fiction, cosmic horror, body horror, and weird fiction.

• Life Writing I

  This module will allow you to explore a range of life writing practices such as memoir, autofiction, the personal essay, the lyric essay, confessional poetry and more in a safe and supportive environment. You’ll be inspired by a range of contemporary writers such as Rebecca Solnit, Ocean Vuong, Maggie Nelson, Patricia Lockwood, Nina Mingya Powles and others. You’ll consider the ethics of life writing such as writing about family, and draw on your own experiences, interests and passions throughout.

Compulsory

• Creative Writing Special Project
  You will produce an extended piece of work totaling 10,000 words (plan 500 words, Journal 2500 words, project 7000)
• English Special Project

  To produce an extended piece of work totally 10000 words (500-word plan plus 9500-word dissertation) in which the student undertakes a programme of independent research on a topic of interest relevant to the subject area.

Optional

• Literature, Culture, Society: The Victorians

  This module is structured around three ‘case studies’, each focused on a specific aspect of Victorian literature and culture:

  1. Class, Conflict, Identity
  2. Crime and Sensation: The Newspaper and the Novel
  3. Women and Society

  The aims of the module are:

  • to explore some of the ways in which Victorian literature might encode or challenge particular cultural assumptions
  • to analyse some of the relationships between literary forms and genres, ideological values and changing social and aesthetic contexts of the Victorian period
  • to consider how the knowledge of the Victorian period may contribute to the interpretation of texts produced during this time
• Literature, Gender, Sexuality: The Women's Movement

  This module considers twentieth century and contemporary writing in dialogue with feminist waves and movements as well as relevant theory. It focuses primarily on the Second and Third Waves of feminism, but with a broad recognition of First Wave influences and debates about an emergent Fourth Wave in the contemporary period. Feminism’s relationship to related and other gender/sexual equality movements will be considered along the way, most particularly in connection with LGBT perspectives and masculinity studies. Each week of the module brings theory into dialogue with literature pertaining to feminist perspectives, with an emphasis on women’s writing. The module considers key concepts, such as patriarchy, desire, social and biological claims about gender/sex, and intersectionalism. It pays close attention to the interrelationship between literature and activism, reflecting on the text’s potential to register and remediate the patriarchal order. An indicative reading list might include theorists such as

  Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Patricia Hill Collins, Judith Butler, Susan Faludi, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Rebecca Walker. Literary texts will address the range and diversity of multiple feminisms as articulated from the 20th century to the present, with attention to the pluralisms and diversification of feminisms.

• Writing Otherness: The Muslim World in Early Modern Literature

  This module will introduce third-year students to the early modern interaction between Christians and Muslims, viewed from the perspective of both. It will introduce students to these interactions via English drama. It will explore how post-Reformation England learned to redefine itself as a Christian nation and how it dealt with increased trade and negotiations with Muslim nations. Main topics of study are:

  • Common literary tropes about Muslims in early modern literature
  • Christian and Islamic beliefs and fears in literature
  • Travel writing – interaction of west and east
  • Prose propaganda and multicultural London
  • Writings in captivity
  • The Muslim world in early modern English Literature
• Post-War and Late Twentieth-Century Literature 1945 - 2001

  This module aims to develop your critical, cultural and aesthetic awareness of Post-War and Late Twentieth-Century Fiction by examining the work of both established and more experimental writers. The module focuses first on the sensibilities of the postwar period before exploring the emergence of the ‘postmodern’ as a way of understanding later twentieth century experience. It concludes by exploring the experimental fiction of three leading British writers, Ian McEwan, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson. Two particularly influential late-twentieth century theorists are encountered in detail, Jean Baudrillard and Judith Butler.

• Special Topic: Violence

  This module aims to develop students’ awareness of the representations of violence within modern culture. We engage with a variety of cultural materials—literary, visual, conceptual and technological—to ask a series of questions as regards the role of violence and coercion in our culture and everyday lives. The module is split into two parts. Part one, Bioviolence and Biopolitics looks at biopolitical theories of power, force, violence, coercion and exclusion. The second, Discourses of Coercion 2015-2020 applies the theory to case studies taken from events on the last five years or so such as #Blacklivesmatter, Grenfell Tower, and Coronavirus.

• Author Study: Jane Austen

  Focusing on Austen’s work in relation to adaptation, this module explores the forms of fiction she inherited as a young writer – the novels of Frances Burney and Ann Radcliffe – and how she adapted these models to her own work and concerns. It then considers how Austen was adapted in her turn, in a number of extremely popular films and series, to think about how the late eighteenth century ‘courtship’ and marriage plots continue to be reinvented through to the contemporary period. Texts may include: Radcliffe The Italian 1796, Austen Northanger Abbey (1803/ 1818), Frances Burney Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (1778), Austen Lady Susan (1794/1871), Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813), Robert Z. Leonard d. Pride and Prejudice (1940), Simon Langton d. Pride and Prejudice (1995), Sharon Maguire d. Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001), Chris Van Dusen’s Bridgerton Season 1 (2020).

• Writing Place: Writing Ireland

  The module examines Ireland’s rich literary tradition via key historical touchstones including the Easter Rising of 1916, the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger. Theorised discussions of the meaning of Irish identity, intersections with colonialism, the Irish language and the worldwide diaspora will be framed via readings of poetry, novels, short stories, autobiography and drama. The principle aims of Writing Ireland are:

  1. To undertake a critical survey of a wide range of Irish writing in the English language including depictions of Ireland in poetry, drama and prose genres
  2. To explore the key political events which led to Ireland’s independence and to consider the role of literature in this and beyond
  3. To analyse the preconceptions, stereotypes and literary expectations of Irishness through identity debates and close reading
• Fiction III: Writing Modern Fiction

  This module aims to expand your understanding of all aspects of contemporary fiction. It will give you a solid grounding for your longer future creative writing projects, and also give you a chance to read and discuss a variety of fiction genres. You will analyse a range of fiction from a craft perspective which will deepen your understanding of how novels are constructed, and you can then apply this knowledge to your own fiction writing practice. Topics under discussion will also include the specific techniques involved in making your own writing more compelling such as story structure, characterisation, point of view, setting, and dialogue.

• Poetry II: Writing Contemporary Poetry

  This module is designed to build upon foundational skills and knowledge acquired on the first-year poetry module. You will continue to write in increasingly exciting new ways to

  liberate the poet within. You will also expand your awareness of work that is being produced in the current world of UK poetry, the manner in which new mediums and technologies are being employed, and the manner in which this work might challenge previous conceptualisations and traditions in the field. In conclusion, you will acquire crafting tips while trying out traditional and innovate ways to write. There is no expectation of a house style. Your own approach to poetry based on what you will have learned is all that is required. Be excited by your own work, and I (Daljit) will be excited in turn to read it.

• Screenwriting II: Film and Television

  This module enables students to explore and develop the theory and professional practice of contemporary screenwriting. By the end of the module, students who participate in weekly assignments will produce a marketable pitch deck/series bible for a film or TV project, along with the first 15-20 pages of the script. The module is substantially practice-based and requires students to analyse screen works and scripts (including their own and peers’) from a screenwriting perspective.

• Life Writing II: Journeying the Self through Psychology and Expressive Arts

  This module gives an introduction to the field of psychology, exploring the basics of human behaviour and mental processes, important contributions to the field of psychology and the different approaches and goals of the various therapeutic orientations. Additionally, the module will introduce students to the field of creative writing for therapeutic purposes, including personal practice while studying examples of writing that illustrate the links between creativity and therapeutic outcomes. Some dramatherapy and art therapy techniques will be used during the workshop, although the primary focus is creative writing.

• Creative Careers

  This module is focused on your professional development. It will enable you to understand the creative economy and the ways in which people develop careers within it. You will be able to plan your own career after graduation, to identify your goals and write the documents you will need to achieve them. Members of the Creative Writing department at Brunel along with visiting speakers will help you to become familiar with the creative industries through which writers reach their audience. By exploring all areas of your professional development, we will enable you to make a career plan for the next five years, to identify the opportunities and skills you will need and to research the choices you will make in the immediate future.