Master of Arts - English Literature

Program Description

MA English Literature is an exciting opportunity to study local and global literatures, from the Renaissance through to present day. Engaging with cutting-edge critical theories and through embodied learning, students will consider the importance of literature for the regional and global concerns of the twenty-first century. The analytical, critical and research skills developed on this course prepare students for entry into a wide range of careers.

MA English Literature explores the interrelations between literature and the environments in which it is produced and received. It employs a broad understanding of the word ‘environment’ to include wilderness, wasteland, urban, suburban and domestic spaces. It seeks to understand the role of literature in collective human and non-human resistance and adaptation to environmental change.

As a space that was violently and rapidly unmade and remade during and in the wake of the Second World War, Coventry itself provides a fascinating case study of the evolving relationship between people, non-human animals and the built environment, of the environmentally destructive capacities of war, and of its imbrication with nationalisms and the legacies of colonialism.

This course emphasises real-world engagement and experiential learning. A typical year might include following the river Sherbourne into and out of Coventry and examining the use of space and objects in public buildings; a visit to a landfill site to facilitate discussion on waste disposal innovation; a trip to Lake Geneva to reflect on how the strange weather of 1816 shaped the works Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Byron; and opportunities to conduct in-depth case studies of how literature has galvanised communities of resistance in response to environmental catastrophes such as the Bhopal disaster in India.