Study information

Programme Specification for the 2024/5 academic year

BA (Hons) English and Drama

1. Programme Details

Programme nameBA (Hons) English and Drama Programme codeUFA3EGLSPA02
Study mode(s)Part Time
Full Time
 Academic year2024/5
Campus(es)Streatham (Exeter)
 NQF Level of the Final Award6 (Honours)

2. Description of the Programme

English and Drama at the University of Exeter is a challenging and flexible degree that builds on two internationally-renowned centres of excellence in research, teaching and theatre practice. Our teaching grows out of our wide-ranging, world-leading research interests and we provide a supportive and high-quality environment for learning. The programme provides you with a sense of the range and variety of literary works, introduces you to theoretical approaches that enable you to engage critically with texts understood in their historical and cultural contexts, and develops your critical, imaginative and practical engagement with the social, historical and cultural contexts of theatre.

English modules are taught by staff with expertise in literature from the Middle Ages to the present, in cinema throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, and in creative writing practices in poetry, prose and screen-writing. Drama modules are taught by staff with expertise in theatre, drama and performance theory from the classical era to the present, and in practice fields including acting, directing, scriptwriting, voice, applied theatre, live art, digital theatre crafts, music theatre, puppetry, dance, and intercultural performance training. The programme covers a wide range of material allowing you to develop and follow your own interests with the provision of modules by active researchers who are at the forefront of their respective fields.

Advice and guidance on your programme can be sought from your personal tutor and programme director. All staff offer regular office hours that you can drop into without a prior appointment for this purpose.

3. Educational Aims of the Programme

The programme is intended:

  • to create an environment for scholarship and learning in which the stimulus for independent study is provided by an interest in and involvement with each discipline’s past, present and future potential.
  • to involve you in a wide range of learning with broad coverage, content, and methodology.
  • to create a genuine curiosity about each discipline and to recognise that this curiosity has to be grounded in engagement with the practice and analysis of the specific discipline.
  • to promote a sense of the complex social, cultural, and aesthetic interactions between the production and reception of literary, non-literary and filmic texts.
  • to foster in you an appetite for, and skills to make, effective drama.
  • to enable you to develop a high level of awareness, collaboration and co-operation in group activity.
  • to develop a clear sense of the interdependent relationship between theory/criticism and practice.
  • to provide a basis for further study in English, Drama, or related disciplines, and for teachers of English and Drama at all levels.
  • to develop a range of subject specific, academic and transferable skills, including high order conceptual literacy and communication skills, and those based on social interaction and communication.

4. Programme Structure

5. Programme Modules

The following tables describe the programme and constituent modules. Constituent modules may be updated, deleted or replaced as a consequence of the annual programme review of this programme.

English modules https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/studyinformation/modules/?prog=english
Drama modules https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/studyinformation/modules/?prog=drama

You may take optional modules as long as any necessary prerequisites have been satisfied, where the timetable allows and if you have not already taken the module in question or an equivalent module. Optional modules offered are subject to change depending on staff availability and student demand. You are expected to balance your credits in each stage of the programme, taking 60 credits from Drama, and 60 credits from English.

You may take elective modules up to 15 credits outside of the programme in the first stage and up to 30 credits outside of the programme in the second and final stages as long as any necessary prerequisites have been satisfied, where the timetable allows and if you have not already taken the module in question or an equivalent module.

Stage 1

45 credits of compulsory English modules, 60 credits of compulsory Drama modules and 15 credits of optional English modules.

Compulsory Modules

CodeModule Credits Non-condonable?
DRA1016 Performance Analysis 30No
DRA1018 The Creative Actor 30No
EAS1035 Beginnings: English Literature before 1800 30No
EAS1041 Rethinking Shakespeare 15No

Optional Modules

a - You must select 15 credits from this list of optional English modules; EAS1040 is only available in Term 2 to Combined Honours students.

CodeModule Credits Non-condonable?
English Stage 1 CH Option Modules 2024-5 [See note a above]
EAS1037 The Novel 15 No
EAS1038 The Poem 15 No
EAS1041 Rethinking Shakespeare 15 No
EAS1044 Imagine This: Prompts for Creative Writing 15 No
EAS1016 Digital Cultures: Narrative, Creativity, Industry 15 No

Stage 2

60 credits of optional English modules and 60 credits of optional Drama modules.

Optional Modules

Subject to choosing 120 credits for the stage overall, you must:

b - select 60 credits from this list of optional Drama modules - Students can only take one practice module and one Drama seminar module.

c - select 60 credits from this list of optional English modules. English modules in stage 2 are divided into three groups: Group 1, modules concerned with pre-1750 literature; Group 2, modules concerned with post-1750 literature; Group 3, modules not concerned with a particular historical period. Combined Honours students may not take more than one module from each group.

CodeModule Credits Non-condonable?
Drama Stage 2 Option Modules 2024-5 [See note b above]
DRA2026 Applied Drama: Interactive Theatre 30 No
DRA2042 Puppetry and Object Theatre 30 No
DRA2044 Acting Shakespeare 30 No
DRA2045 Theatre and Health 30 No
DRA2047 Interpretive Acting 30 No
DRA2061B Digital Theatrecrafts 30 No
DRA2072 Culture in / as Performance 30 No
DRA2076 Playwriting 30 No
DRA2077 Theatre for Environmental Change 30 No
DRA2083 Intermedial Performance Practice 30 No
DRA2087 Activism and Performance 30 No
DRA2089 Popular Entertainment and Performance Documentation 30 No
DRA2092 Modernist Drama in Contemporary Theatre 30 No
DRA2096 Voices Across Stage and Screen 30 No
DRA2104 Approaches to Comedy 30 No
DRA2105 Eco-Theatre: Outdoor and Immersive Performance 30 No
DRA2108 Introduction to Creative Producing: Making Change and Shifting Cultures 30 No
DRA2109 Ensemble Acting: Co-Creation 30 No
DRA2110 Political Theatre: The 1980s 30 No
DRA2111 Live Art and Spatial Practices 30 No
English Stage 2 Pre-1750 Option Modules 2024-5 [See note c above]
EAS2026 Desire and Power: English Literature 1570-1640 30 No
EAS2036 Theatrical Cultures in Early Modern England 30 No
EAS2071 Chaucer and His Contemporaries 30 No
EAS2080 Renaissance and Revolution 30 No
EAS2102 Satire and the City: English Literature 1660-1750 30 No
English Stage 2 Post-1750 Option Modules 2024-5 [See note c above]
EAF2510 Adaptation: Text, Image, Culture 30 No
EAS2029 Revolutions and Evolutions 19C Writings 30 No
EAS2103 Modernism and Modernity: Literature 1900-1960 30 No
EAS2104 Crossing the Water: Transatlantic Literary Relations 30 No
EAS2106 Romanticism 30 No
EAS2116 Empire of Liberty: American Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century 30 No
English Stage 2 Neutral Option Modules 2024-5 [See note c above]
AHV2018 Comics Studies: Histories, Methodologies, Genres 30 No
EAS2031 Creative Writing: Building a Story 30 No
EAS2032 Creative Writing: Making a Poem 30 No
EAS2089 Creative Industries: Their Past, Our Future 30 No
EAS2090 Humanities after the Human: Further Adventures in Critical Theory 30 No
EAS2113 Culture, Crisis and Ecology in a Postcolonial World 30 No
HUM2000 Humanities in the Workplace 30 No

Stage 3

0-30 credits of compulsory English modules, 0-30 credits of compulsory Drama modules, 30-60 credits of optional English modules, and 30-60 credits of optional Drama modules.

 

Compulsory Modules

d - select a Dissertation in either Drama or English: DRA3094 or EAS3003 or EAS3122 (you cannot choose more than one module from this group).

CodeModule Credits Non-condonable?
DRA3094 Theatre Dissertation [See note d above]30No
EAS3003 Dissertation [See note d above]30No
EAS3122 Creative Writing Dissertation [See note d above]30No

Optional Modules

if selecting EAS3003 or EAS3122, select 60 credits from this list of optional Drama modules.

if selecting DRA3094, select 60 credits from this list of optional English modules.      

CodeModule Credits Non-condonable?
Drama Final Stage Option Modules 2024-5
DRA3011 Practice II: Technical Specialisation 30 No
DRA3012 Theatre Practice I: Applied Drama 30 No
DRA3050 Creative Industries Management 30 No
DRA3051 Voice for the Actor 30 No
DRA3061 Practical Essay 30 No
DRA3088 Women and Theatre 1700-1928 30 No
DRA3092 Theatre for a Changing Climate 30 No
DRA3094 Theatre Dissertation 30 No
DRA3095 Music Drama 30 No
DRA3100 Physical Performance 30 No
DRA3102 Audio Dramaturgy: Theatre of the Ear 30 No
DRA3104 Approaches to Acting 30 No
DRA3105 Theatre for Environmental Change 30 No
DRA3106 Acting for Screen 30 No
DRA3107 Theatres Against Colonialism 30 No
English Final Stage Option Modules 2024-5
EAS3128 Writing the Short Film 30 No
EAS3131 Advanced Critical Theory 30 No
EAS3181 Visual and Literary Cultures of Realism 30 No
EAS3182 Encountering the Other in Medieval Literature 30 No
EAS3191 Writing for Children and Young Adults 30 No
EAS3198 The Death of the Novel 30 No
EAS3219 Virginia Woolf: Fiction, Feeling, Form 30 No
EAS3225 'Reader, I Married Him': The Evolution of Romance Fiction from 1740 to the Present 30 No
EAS3237 The Rise of Science 30 No
EAS3245 The 21st Century Museum 30 No
EAS3252 Poison, Filth, Trash: Modernism, Censorship and Resistance 30 No
EAS3311 Piracy in Early Modern Literature, 1570-1730 30 No
EAS3408 Poetry and Politics 30 No
EAS3414 Jane Austen: In and Out of Context 30 No
EAS3415 The Development of British Childrens Literature 30 No
EAS3416 Feeling Bodies: Emotions in Early Modern Literature and Culture, 1500-1700 30 No
EAS3417 Sex, Scandal and Sensation in Victorian Literature 30 No
EAS3420 Staging Space: Dramatic Geography and Audience Experience 30 No
EAS3421 Picturing the Global City: Literature and Visual Culture in the 21st Century 30 No
EAS3502 Shakespeare and Crisis 30 No
EAS3503 Migration, Literature and Culture 30 No
EAS3501 Fiction Matters 30 No
EAS3100 Hardy and Women Who Did: the Coming of Modernity 30 No
EAS3500 American Counterculture in Literature 30 No
EAS3504 Surrealism and its Legacies 30 No
EAS3228 Romance from Chaucer to Shakespeare 30 No
EAS3509 From Pen to Printed Page: Exeter's Literary Archives 30 No
EAS3511 'Mad': cultures, histories, phantasies, imaginaries of mental distress 30 No
EAS3312 Adventures in Technique (Poetry) 30 No
EAS3196 Charles Dickens: Novelist, Journalist and Reformer 30 No

6. Programme Outcomes Linked to Teaching, Learning and Assessment Methods

Intended Learning Outcomes
A: Specialised Subject Skills and Knowledge

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
On successfully completing this programme you will be able to:		Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) will be...
...accommodated and facilitated by the following learning and teaching activities (in/out of class):...and evidenced by the following assessment methods:

1. Identify English and Drama as broad subject disciplines.
2. Identify and evaluate the variety of approaches and critical traditions taken within the disciplines.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of recurring themes in the disciplines, evaluate key developments within a topic and relate them to an overall conception of the subject matter
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the distinctive character of texts produced in the principal genres and traditions across the historical range of English and of the distinctive forms, practices, traditions, and practitioners of Drama and performance, and relate them with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
5. Show knowledge of the dominant concepts, methods and debates informing the study of the discipline.
6. Appreciate and describe how texts and performances produce and reflect cultural change and difference.
7. Demonstrate knowledge of the cultural and socio-historic contexts in which the elements of the discipline have been produced, presented and consumed.
8. Apply critical terminology and, where appropriate, methodological, linguistic, stylistic, and/or formal terminology to an understanding of English and Drama; utilise appropriate bibliographical style.
9. Demonstrate comprehension, and creative and intelligent engagement with group and collective processes, and the processes by which creative outcomes and performances are generated and realised.

ILOs 1-9 are acquired through lectures, seminars, workshops, studio-based sessions, rehearsals, study groups, tutorials and other learning activities throughout the programme. The degree of specialisation of subject knowledge increases during the programme, culminating in the dissertation and special subject modules. Modules at final stage are most closely related to the research specialism of the staff teaching the module. The precise method of teaching varies according to each module. On team-taught modules you will normally engage in both lectures and seminar groups. In smaller options you will normally spend most of your contact time in seminar groups and workshops.

Your learning is further developed through engagement with assessments, following guidance from tutors and lecturers and through feedback on work submitted.

The assessment of these skills is through a combination of presentations and participation in seminars, log-books, web-based assessments, essays, exams, other written reports/projects, and a dissertation. Essays, exams and presentations are especially significant within the programme because they assess each of the skills, A1-A8. The assessment criteria pay full recognition to the importance of the various skills outlined.

Intended Learning Outcomes
B: Academic Discipline Core Skills and Knowledge

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
On successfully completing this programme you will be able to:		Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) will be...
...accommodated and facilitated by the following learning and teaching activities (in/out of class):...and evidenced by the following assessment methods:

10. Draw thematic comparisons between materials from different sources.
11. Articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to English and Drama.
12. Apply critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts.
13. Engage creatively and critically with the possibilities for performance implied by a text or score and, as appropriate, to realise these sources sensitively through design and performance, and through a sensitive understanding of appropriate performance vocabularies, techniques, structures and working methods.
14. Communicate effectively in oral and written presentation, command a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terrminology.
15. Apply bibliographic skills appropriate to the discipline, including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of conventions in the presentation of scholarly work

These skills are developed throughout the programme in all modules, with the emphasis becoming more complex as you move from stage to stage. They are developed through lectures, seminars, and studio work; written work, and oral work (both in practical presentation and seminar discussion), and reinforced through the range of modules across all stages. They will culminate in the substantial and independent research skills demonstrated within the dissertation and final stage modules.

The assessment of these skills is through a combination of methods, which may include presentations, performance, and participation in seminars, log-books, web-based assessments, portfolios, essays, exams, other written reports/projects, and a dissertation.

Intended Learning Outcomes
C: Personal/Transferable/Employment Skills and Knowledge

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
On successfully completing this programme you will be able to:		Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) will be...
...accommodated and facilitated by the following learning and teaching activities (in/out of class):...and evidenced by the following assessment methods:

16. Apply advanced literacy and communication skills in appropriate contexts including the ability to present sustained and persuasive written and oral arguments.
17. Analyse and critically examine diverse forms of material, both textual and visual.
18. Acquire and interrelate substantial quantities of complex information of diverse kinds, in a structured and systematic way, and involving the use of the distinctive methodological and interpretative skills of the subject areas.
19. Apply research skills for the retrieval of historical material, and gather, sift and organise this material independently and critically, evaluating its significance.
20. Interrogate and apply a variety of theoretical positions, and weigh the importance of alternative perspectives in a critical and self-reflective manner
21. Exercise independent thought and judgment.
22. Engage with others through the presentation of ideas and information in groups, and work towards the collective negotiation of solutions.
23. Plan and execute written and other forms of project-work over both short and long timescales.
24. Complete tasks under time-constrained conditions and effectively manage deadlines and targets.
25. Employ IT skills, and access and assess electronic data via the internet and through other forms of interactive media.
26. Adapt and transfer the critical methods of the disciplines into unfamiliar contexts, including a variety of working environments.

Personal and key skills are delivered through all modules, and developed in lectures, workshops, study groups, tutorials, work experience and other learning activities throughout the programme.  

The assessment of these skills is through a combination of methods, which may include presentations, performance, and participation in seminars, log-books, web-based assessments, portfolios, essays, exams, other written reports/projects, and a dissertation.

ILOs 16-21 are also strongly developed in the course of the assessed essays and other written work produced through all stages. These assessments work on the principle of offering formative feedback to support the development of your written work within as well as between modules. Feedback on one assignment is intended to inform the next piece of work you undertake on the module; the next piece of work on the programme, or the future learning of graduates.

ILO 22 is associated especially with the range of group presentations, performances, studio-based sessions and practical tasks taking place in modules during all stages. Group presentation assessment brings into focus an important range of skills for students, including sharing workloads, responsibility for tasks, team-working, collaborative and communicative skills. Individual contributions to group work are also assessed individually, most often in the form of a reflective presentation report or reflective portfolio.

ILOs 23-25 are also accomplished in the course of ‘real-time’ formal assessments such as presentations, performances, and end of module exams, which occur in all levels of the programme.

ILO 26 is particularly related to the optional module ‘Humanities in the Workplace’, and to the range of work conducted in the field beyond the University.

7. Programme Regulations

Classification

Full details of assessment regulations for all taught programmes can be found in the TQA Manual, specifically in the Credit and Qualifications Framework, and the Assessment, Progression and Awarding: Taught Programmes Handbook. Additional information, including Generic Marking Criteria, can be found in the Learning and Teaching Support Handbook.

8. College Support for Students and Students' Learning

All students within English and Drama have a personal tutor for their entire programme of study and who are available at advertised ‘office hours’. There are induction sessions to orientate you at the start of your programme. A personal tutoring system will operate with regular communication throughout the programme. Academic support will be also be provided by module leaders. You can also make an appointment to see individual teaching staff.

9. University Support for Students and Students' Learning

Please refer to the University Academic Policy and Standards guidelines regarding support for students and students' learning.

10. Admissions Criteria

Undergraduate applicants must satisfy the Undergraduate Admissions Policy of the University of Exeter.

Postgraduate applicants must satisfy the Postgraduate Admissions Policy of the University of Exeter.

Specific requirements required to enrol on this programme are available at the respective Undergraduate or Postgraduate Study Site webpages.

11. Regulation of Assessment and Academic Standards

Each academic programme in the University is subject to an agreed College assessment and marking strategy, underpinned by institution-wide assessment procedures.

The security of assessment and academic standards is further supported through the appointment of External Examiners for each programme. External Examiners have access to draft papers, course work and examination scripts. They are required to attend the Board of Examiners and to provide an annual report. Annual External Examiner reports are monitored at both College and University level. Their responsibilities are described in the University's code of practice. See the University's TQA Manual for details.

(Quality Review Framework.

14. Awarding Institution

University of Exeter

15. Lead College / Teaching Institution

Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS)

16. Partner College / Institution

Partner College(s)

Not applicable to this programme

Partner Institution

Not applicable to this programme.

17. Programme Accredited / Validated by

0

18. Final Award

BA (Hons) English and Drama

19. UCAS Code

WQ34

20. NQF Level of Final Award

6 (Honours)

21. Credit

CATS credits ECTS credits

22. QAA Subject Benchmarking Group

[Honours] English
[Honours] Dance, drama and performance

23. Dates

Origin Date

01/11/2011

 Date of last revision

09/08/2022